
SPEECH 



CtEORGE E. PUGH, of OHIO, 



gOKDITION OF AFFAIRS IN KANSAS TBRUITORY. 



SELrVEIlE© 






: i-iii. v>ir!L,iV rji'ATES SEN.4TE, MAY 26, iS5«. 



WASHINGTON: 

rSINTED AT TOE UNION OFFICE. 
1856. 



*^ 



AFFAIRS IN KANSAS. 



The bill to authorize the people of the Territory of Kansas toj'orm a constitution and State 
£;overnment, preparatory to their admission into the Union when they have the requisite popu- 
lation, bf-in^ under consifleration, 

Mr. PUGH said : The condition of affairs in Kansas Territory for the past year has been 
such as to fill the heart of a patriotic statesman with unafTectad sorrow and alarm. Together, 
like twin sisters, that Territory and the Territory of Nebraska came into existence on the 30th 
of May, 1854, by virtue of one act of Congress, and with organizations in all respects the same. 
In Nebraska, so far as we can learn, quiet and order have prevailed, and the foundations of a 
prosperous State have been securely established. But Kansas, alaiost from the hoar of its 
birth, has been the arena of conflict, violence, and bloodshed. These disorders became more 
intense, as well as more frequent, from month to month, until the assembling of Congress in 
December last ; and at an early period of the session — before the House of Representatives had 
notified us of its organization — had attained a serious degree of importance. The season in 
which we are accustomed to celebrate the advent of the Prince of Peace on earth — when of old 
the langels in manifest glory proclaimed "goodwill" to all mankind*— that season, so sacred 
and festal, brought us tidings of the most terrible character ; tidings that discontent had ripened ■ 
into rebellion, and strife proceeded to the bitterness of civil war. The promises of the jiew 
year came not to soothe our anxieties ; but, instead, a solemn message from the President, 
advising us that all the appliances of conciliation had been exhausted, and that we must pre- 
pare for an appeal to arms if we would maintain the supremacy of the laws. And now, since 
the last adjournment of the Senate, even more dreadful reports have reached our ears ; and the 
" bloody issue" threatened, as well as foretold, by ihe convention which met at the Big Springs, 
in September, presses onward to a fiercer stage and still more frightful consequences, in this 
great emergency, Mr. President, each senator and representative of the United States in Con- 
gress ought to regard well his course, and beware lest through him our mighty republic should 
come to a fatal and inglorious ruin. 

These reflections indicate with sufficient clearness the path I shall endeavor to tread. And 
it is rather to my constituents, for mj^ own sake, that I now proceed to declare the conclusions, 
both of law and feet, in reference to the general question, at which i have deliberately arrived. 

And first in order, I come to the substitute offered by the senator from New York [Mr. 
Seward] to the bill reported bj'-'the Committee on Territories. That proposes the admission 
(if Kansas into the Union as a State upon the constitution adopted by the convention of dele- 
gates which assembled at Topeka on the 23d of October last. To this, sir, I have two pre- 
liminary objections, and each of them is insuperable : 

1. I do not bcieve that the Territory contains more than twenty-four thousand inhabitants : 
and not that number, certainly, if one-half the accusations made by the senator from Vermont, 
[Mr. CoLLAMEP.,] in his speech some weeks ago, be true. The votes given at the regular electiori 
for a delegate in Congress last fall, togethf r with those which Andrew H. Reeder pretends U-> 
have received on the seccnid Tuesday of October, amount to some six thousand ; and as the 
inhabitants are chiefly men without families, or men who have left their families in the States 
whence they emigrated, I consider it a liberal estimate — and, indeed, an extravagant one — to 
say that the population is equal to four times the number of voters. The senator from Vermont 
does not claim, in his report, more than twenty-five thousand. 

To countervail this fact as far as possible, the senator from New York asserts that no specific 
number of inhabitants is required by the constitution for the admission of any State. Perhaps, 
sir, such a requisite has not been expressed in terms ; but when the constitution declares, 
article first, section second, " thsnumber of representatives [in Congress] shall not exceed one for . 
every thirty thousand," it was intended, I think, to fix that number as the least constituency to 
1)6 allowed for a representative, except in the case of an origiiial State, or a State admitted with 
a larger population, and reduced, by emigration or some other cause, belov/ the standard. 

If this were otherwise, however, I sliould not be disposed to admit any State with so meagre 
a population. It would be unjust to New York, or Pennsjlvania, or Ohio, or Virginia, if her 
vote could be nu lifted in this Hcuse by the vote of two senators representing a less number of 
i.ihabitants by two-thirds and more than the act of Congress prescribes for the constituency of 
a single member in the other Hcuse. 

2. The Topeka constitution never was adopted by the citizens of the Territory, nor even by 
a respectable number of them. It did not receive more than seven hundred"and nineteen vctes, 



all told, in a Territory which contains five or six thousand legal voters. There is no pretence 
:n the papers submitted to us that the people ever ratified it. The petitions from Leaven- 
worth, presented with the constitution, make no such claim. They intimate, to be sure, that 
the people uwuld have ratified it on the 15lh of December, if the polls had been regularly 
opened, and the election allowed to proceed. Whether this be so or otherwise I cannot decide -, 
but I am ccrtam that no ratification such as the constitution itself requires ever was given. I 
cannot hesitaie to say, therefore, that the " Siate of Kansas" is a mere fiction, and its goverrior, 
legislators, judujes, et cclera, are but titular dignitaries. 

1 do not think it worth while at present to urge any other objection ; the facts are plain, and 
their legal effect is beyond all disputation, or the necessity of serious comment. 

It is next suggested rather darkly in the "views" submitted hy the senator from Vermont, 
as a member of the Committee on Territories, that we should annul, ab ini'io, the proceedings 
and f.ction of the late Territorial legislature. This would be an extraordinary, and, indeed, 
high-handed exercise of power — one for which there is no precedent, so far aa 1 can discover, 
in the history of congressional enactments. 1 must have a very clear case to warrant me in 
such interference ; and that case must establish, by certain and unanswerable testimony, these 
propositions : 

1. That the members of the legislature, or a majority of them, were not properly elected. 

2. 'I'hat their acts of lejrislation are of a character intolerable to American citizens. 

3. That there is no remedy less violent for tlie evils alleged. 

Because, sir, it is a serious matter to avoid in toto a body of atitutes under which marriages 
have been celebrated, estates distributed, property acquired, and rights othfrwise established. 
I am not prepared to say that such on abrrgation of the stHtutes ex post facto would cancel mar- 
riages or divest estates ; but it would give rise to many doubts, and great confusion, uncer- 
tainty, and distress. 

The senator from Vermont has endeavored to show, in his report and by his speech, that the 
Territorial legislature Avas — to use his own language — a " spurious foreign" legislature ; or, in 
other wcrds^ that its members were not elected by the bona fide residents and voters. He has 
hkewise asserted that some of the laws which it enacted were peculiarly oppressive and 
tyrannical. But I do not discover in his report or his speech, or in the speeches of his coadju- 
tors, even a remote allusion to the last, and, after all, most important of the requisites I have 
Epecified. Let us admit, for a while, that his accusations are literally true ; is there no redress 
on this side of revolution.' In my judgment, sir, ttiere is. A new house of representatives 
will be chosen in October, and in one year from that time a new council. If the governor — 
armed as he noic is with the military power of the Union — should repress invasions or tumults 
at the electi-in, and secure to the inhabit>intaan unmolested right of suffrage, cannot all obnox- 
ious laws be repealed according to the regular and accustomed form.' 

The senator declares this impcssible, however, until after the election of 1857; because, he 
says, the councillors already chosen will resist to the uttermost the wishes of the other house. 
I lake such a suggestion to be, upon its face, rather improbable; but, as an extreme case, let 
us imagiiro it to be well founded. What then.? Is the condition of the citizens of Kansas 
any worse than that which has at times befallen the citizens of a State .' How often, sir. have 
the citizens of Indiana been deceived by the professions of legislative candidates, and induced 
to bcsiov/ t'.eir confidence only to find it betrayed without scruple, and themselves bitterly 
oppressed.' It has happened, and too frequently, in the State of Ohio. But, sir, neither the 
citizens of Indiana nor those of Ohio ever dreamed of redress except through patience, submis- 
sion for the present, and a change of rulers in due time. Are ihe citizens of Kansas so much 
better, I ask, that we must invent some unexampled remedy, next to a forcible revolution, 
rather than exact of them a little forbearance.' 

But, sir, let us proceed to ihe other requisites I have specified, and see if the senator from 
Vermont can establish either of them. First, then, is the question whether the Territorial 
legislature of Kansas was a " spurious" or a valid letjislature. It seems to be taken as true, in 
both the reports submitted from the Committee on "^rerritories, that in seven districts — repre- 
sented in the legislature by three councillor.^! and nine repre.-Sfntatives — the election of March 
30, 1855, was tumultuous and irregular. We have heard much, here and elsewhere, of the 
conduct of certain citizens of Missouri npon the border of Kansas, who are charged with hav- 
ing invaded the Territory in organized companie.s with arms in their hands, with music and 
banners, and driving the qualified v(iters from the polls. When we come, however, to the, 
trpecification of all these charges — when we demand the occasion, the place, thecircumst.^nces — 
in every instance, so far as I have been able to discover, the venue is laid in one or another of 
the seven districts, or in some precinct where the returns of the election were disregarded. 
That violence may have occurred elsewhere, that the right of suffrage may not have been exer- 
cised in every instance with as much freedom as it should have been, that illegal votes may 
have been received and illegal votes rejected — these things, Mr. President, may have transpired. 
I cannot deny the asseition ; nor, certainly, can I affirm it. No testimony to that effect has 
been ]iroduced here : none has hern discovered by the Committee on Territories, or even by 
the senator from Vermont, a member of that commiitee who dissents from the conclusions aJ 
which his collcairues arrived. Neither the House of Representatives nor i*s Committee of Elec- 
tions, after a deliberation of two or three months, could find any such evidence; and, as a las; 
resort, an expedient of the most desperate character, three gentlemen have been appointed *.r 



5-. 

visit ihe Territory, well provided with money and political influence, armed with unii'tiitei 
power to senrt for persons and papers, in the eager- hope of diecoverinj: some fact, supports! 
by the oath of somfi person, to eke out the multitude of assertions so lustily and recklessly made 
for a year past in public speeches, and through the newspapers. 

In this emergency, sir, the faith of the senator from Iowa [Mr. Harlan] soared above all 
difficulties. He exhorted us to adopt these assertions as matters of history, and not as ma!- 
:er3 controverted between rival parties, unsuatained by official records, and to be establishel 
(if at all) upon clear and authentic evidence. He compared the assurance of their correcinese, 
derived from the vague declarations of interested witnesses, anonymous writers, private cor- 
respondents, itinerant lecturers, partisan newspapers, not only wiih our assurance that Lou.s 
Napoleon is the ruler of the French empire, but even — I deplore such a comparison — with our 
assiirance that the " Saviour of nrankind was once made manifest in the flesh."' Yes, Mr. 
President, as matters of history, that was t^ie phrase. How it may have been, sir, with othe.rs 
upon iliat occasion, 1 knw not; but, for my part, I was forcibly reminded of Bolingbroke's 
bitter apothegm, "All history must be false! " 

The senator is not alone, however, in this achievement. Certain members of the Ohio 
legislature, with a lofty contempt for particulars, without any regard to the acknowledged 
sources of truth or rules of evidence, have comprehended, ascertained, and decided the w^hole 
question. They, forsooth, knew all about it. JNaught, sir, did they care for the committecK, 
or the commissioners, designated in either House of Congress: their eyes beheld, their ears 
heard, accurately, what transpired at the distance of more than a thousand miles And they 
seem to have p'lstponed the transaction of their proper legislative business, deferred the per- 
formance of their own duties to another year, in order, graciously, to ' instruct " my colleague 
and myself, as well as twenty-one members of the other House, and the governors of all the 
States in the Union, how to solve a disputed cjuestion of fact. Sir, I believe the citizens 
of Ohiowill regard such behavior — as I regard it — a mere and empty ebullition of partisan 
seal. 

I repeat, Mr. President, violence may have occurred fn other districts or precincts than those 
specified; but ihere is no evidence of it, and nothing to render it even probable. When the 
fact shall have been established — if it ever can be established — by such testimony as we oupht 
to receive in a case of great and solemn interest, I will be ready to act with some degree of 
confidence. At present, however, I do not believe that either a majority of the council, or a 
majority of the House of Representatives, constituiing the Territorial legislature of Kansas?, 
were unduly elected, or that the legislature was, in any sence, a " spurious" one. I should 
not be astonished, sir, if some degree of turbulence had prevailed in every pi-ecinct and at every 
poll. .That would only be in keeping with the course of elections elsewhere in the United 
States for the last eighteen months. None of the scenes depicted as having occurred in the 
seven districts of Kansas, on the 30th of March, 1855, exceed, in tumultuous array, or in other 
qualification of banners, music, and fire-arms, the scenes which transpired at Cincinnati on the 
arst Monday of April, in the same ye-ir. Nor were the consequences in any respect, more 
alarming and sorrowful. For days and nights* t'^gether a furious mob kept that city in almost 
breiithkss t'cnr — assaulted, time and again, the habitations of inoffensive men, feeble women, 
and helpless children — and was subdued, at length, by an appeal to arms, and at the sacrifice 
of human life. I will not relate what is said to have occurred at Louisville and at New Or- 
leans during that year. Those are matters which I know only from report. 

But 1 wish to remind the citizens of Ohio that, whdsi a majority of their legislature had tears 
to shed over tlie turbulent elections of Kansas Territory, it looked with calm and even cold in- 
difl[ereiice at tlie violence, the bloodshed, the inexcuf^able wickedness, perpretrated at an elec- 
tion held in their own midst. No man has betn punished for these transactions; no man has 
even been prosecuted. The " cause" of the Kansas insurgents is commended, by Ici-isiative 
resolutions, to the " warm sympathies " of the public ; but the outrages inflicted on our citizens 
at. home have not been thought worthy of notice. The ears of the governor and the legisla- 
ture were deaf, pertinaciously, to the ajipeals of our own people: they would hear the" shriek,? 
for freedom " afar off, thousands of miles, in Kansas Territory ; but as for the occurrences in 
Cincinnati — the destipction of ballot-boxes, burning, of ballots, poll-book.^, ar.d tally-sheets, 
driving of judges from their places, abusing the mayor in the execution of his office, beating 
and wounding peaceable voters, firing muskeis and pistols into houses filled with women and 
children — establishing a reign of irftminnnt terror throughout one-third of the city, and alarm- 
ing all the rest — these were matters of no consequence I 

The senator from Vermont feels the urgency of this question, and has undertaken, therefore, 
to demonstrate that the fiiray of the Missouri border-men must have extended inio other dis- 
tricts than the seven already specified. His argument dfpends aliogether upon the fact that, 
by the census taken in Januf^ry, J855, it was asiertauied that the Territory contained two 
thousand nine hundred and' five voters, whereas at the election, (March 30,) more than isix 
thousand votes were cast. 

To this, however, a conclusive answer was suggested by the distinguished senator from 
Illinois, [Mr. Dotjglas] upon the spur of the moment ; it is, that the Territory was opened for 
settlement l&te in the previous year, and few immigrants had time to do more than seltct their 
locations, and mark out the limits of their " claims " lor pre-emption ; or, at furthest, brf ak up 
the soiP, and sow grain for the ensuing sea.son, when the winter overtook them. Without 



houses or other shelter — without food, or even a change of raiment — in a v/ild country — what 
course could these men take, Mr. President, except return to their former abodes in Illinois, 
Indiana, and Kentucky, or seek refuge in the border settlements of Missouri? And, sir, 
hundreds of these very men — emigrants from other States, (some even from New Enirland,^ 
bojourning in Missouri for the winter — men who had "claims" staked off, and crops planted 
in Kansas, are styled "non-resident voters," "border ruffians," "Missouri invaders," be- 
cause they repaired to the Territory in March, 1855, and voted at the election. Had they a 
ri^ht to vote? To be sure, Mr. President, their families were not in Kansas, because they had 
not erected even cabins upon their farms to protect those families againts the snows of winter ; 
but they were bona fide residents of the Territory, and qualified voters in every conceivable 
sense. Even Governor Reader, as the executive minutes will show, had not his family in 
Kansas at that time •, yet no man denies, I imagine, ^that he v/as an actual inhabitant, and, as 
such, entitled to the right of suffrage. 

The.>e circumstances, Mr. President, show that the census cannot be taken as a fair indica- 
tion of the number of legal voters. It was orderd on the 15th of January, but the fact is re- 
corded out of its proper place, in the executive minutes, by more than a month. It only 
appears after three entries, dated February 27th, and by that time the census was almost com- 
pleted. 1 do not pretend to give a reason why this was done ; but certainly, if an inhabitant 
of Kansas, domiciled in Missouri for the winter, had gone to the records of the executive office, 
at Shawnee Mission, he could not have learned Ihe time, or the manner in which, or the per- 
sons by whom, the census was to be taken. When Csesar Augustus promulgated the famous 
decree, " tliat all the world should be taxed," notice was given for every man to return " into 
his own city," and there be assessed ; but when Governor Reeder wished to enumerate the in- 
l:abilants of Kansas Territory, in onJer to ascertain the legal voteis, it does not seem that any 
rotice was given, or, indeed, any record made, until the census had been nearly or quite 
finished. 

Befoie the 3d of March, as the executive minutes show, all the returns of the enumeration 
had been delivered to the governor ; so that the census was taken at the most inclement season 
of the year, in a country where few houses had been erected, and when one half the inhabitants, 
or more, had been compelled to seek slielter at their former places of residence, or in the 
neighboring State of Missouri. 

The election was held on the 30th of March, 1855, in virtue of a proclamation dated twenty- 
two days previous. Is it wonderful, in such circumstances, that all those residents of Kansas 
who were sojourning in Missouri should have rushed into the Territory, should have voted, 
and should even have returned to their places of transient abode in .Missouri, to await the cqmirg 
of mild weather before lemoving to their farms in Kansas, and commencing to build iheiir 
houses ? 1 he 30th of March is a bleak season in that latitude. It is not a time, sir, at which 
any man could well afford to live in tents, or commence, upon the prairies, to erect a perma- 
nent habitation. In it wonderful that hundreds of the people of Kansas, who had returned 
for the winter .to Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, should have made haste to regain the Ter- 
ritory in order to vote, and Ihen sought a present shelter in the cities or towns of Western 
Missouri? Is ii; even wonJerful, sir, that in all this confusion and tumult, when the Ter- 
ritory was witliout laws, and almost wifliout a government; while thousands of absentees 
entitled to vote were speeding towards Kansas; v/hile every steamer which ascended the 
river, day af'er day, was crowded with new comers and returning settlers — that the vague 
rumors of a great Massachusetts corporation, with millions of capital, organized for the purpose 
of sccurins: the best lands of the Territory, and, by pcuring in a flood of New England fana- 
tics, not only excluding others from a choice of favorable locations, but establishing a colony 
from which offensive operations could be set on foot against the property and the peace of 
Missouri — even if tiiese rumors were entirely without excuse, even if none of the persons 
sent out by the corporation had carried arms of a new and peculiarly destructive character, 
or indulged the least aggressive speech or threat — should have influenced some of the citizens 
and young men of Wesicrn Missouri, alarmed for t|hcir safely at home, or wishing to obtain 
locations in Kansas, or instigated by a_ sense of injury, well or ill foqgjded, to join in the 
multitude of those who were rushing iiMo the Tenitory, or proceed in companies, with arms 
displayed, with drums beating, and colors flying, (although this part, I believe, is mere ex- 
aggeration,) and engage in the general disturbance — some to seek their fortunes in the new 
community, some to create mischief, some to vote, some to drive voters from the polls, some 
to make speeclies, and some only to make a noise; 

Sir, these excesses arc not uncommon io the older States of the Union, and far less in the 
Western and Southwestern States. They were, upon this occasion, the inevitable results o. 
the manner in which the census had been taken, and the |uddenness with which the election 
waspidered, the untimely period chosen for it, and the brief notice^to all concerned. I repeat, 
sir, that 1 do not presume to question the motives of Governor Reeder in this transaction ; ha 
has enough to answer, to explain, and (if possible) to Justify before God and his country* 
men ; awd I will invent no charges against him. 

Strangely enough, however, the results of the enumeration in January, 1855, do not materi- 
ally assist the senator from Vermont in proving his assertion. These executive minutes show 
that the principal and almost entire exces-s of votes — about which we have heard so irfuch- — 
occurred in liie seven contested districts. 1 have t»iken thcT trouble to compare the returns of 



the cesisus with the returns of the election, district by district, precinct by precinct, and such 
is the result of all my examination. 

The census proves that, on the 15th of January, 1855, there were two thousand nine hun- 
dred and five voters in the Territory. 1 do not stop to count the four hundred and eight 
Jiliens in addition, each of whom could vote (by the Kansas act) as soon as he had taken "the 
oath of allegiance, and declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States. 1 
stand, upon the fact that two thousand nine hundred and five voters were admitted by the 
census. ' 

On the .30th of March, more than ten weeks afterw^ards, there were six thousand three hun- 
dred and thirty-one votes cast — showing an increase of three thousand four hundred and twen- 
ty-six beyond the census. But in those districts and precincts alone, the returns of which 
Governor Reeder. rejected, the increase amounted to two thousand two hundred and seventy- 
nine votes. Add to these, sir, the excess of two hundred and seventy in Bull Creek precinct — 
for that was virtually nullified, also, by Governor Reeder's decision — and we have two thou- 
sand five hundred and forty-nine as the increase of votes. in the contested districts. Take that 
sum from the total already mentioned, and there remain eight hundred and seventy-seven 
votes, as the increase in all the other (uncontested) districts. 

Again, sir, without changing the results of the election, we could reject one hundred and 
forty-three votes in Pottawatomie precinct, against which some complaint seems to have been 
made ; and thi.? would leave an increase of only seven hundred and thirty-four votes. 

Thus far, I repeat, the results of the election in March, 1855, will not be disturbed— except 
as to three councillors and six representatives (the three representatives for Leavenworth hav- 
ing been chosen again at the May election) in the Territorial legislature. And if we follow the 
counsels of the senator from Vermont as to the tenth representative district— if we suppose the 
election to have been vacated, and some other candidate than Mr. Tebbsto have been elected — 
we must reject the excess of votes (one hundred and fifty-nine) in that district likewise. Thus, 
after the mighty achievement of unseating one representative — for that is all — we should find 
the legal voters of Kansas to have increased, from January 15 until March 30, only five hundred 
and seventy-five! 

And yet, Mr. President, the senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] who asks us to be- 
lieve this implicitly, asks us to believe, also, that when the constitutional convention met at To- 
peka, in October, 1855, the Territory had grown from a population of eight thousand six hun- 
dred and one, male and female, old and young, citizens and aliens, white and black, freemen and 
slaves, to fifty or even sixty thousand inhabitants ! 

The senator from Vermont complains that the two houses of the Territorial legislature, re- 
Epectively, set aside the second election, held on the 22d of May, 1855, for councillors and rep- 
resentatives of the seven districts. 

This, sir, is true ; and the question arises, thereupon, by what authority was that election or- 
dained.' The question is not whether the election for councillors and representatives on the 
30th of March should or should not be allowed to stand ; because I proceed, throughout, upon 
the idea that to the extent of those districts it was irregular and tumultuous. The question is. 
what authority had the Governor in this respect ? What power had he to order a new election 
for any district .' The right of every legislative assembly to decide upon the election of its own 
meinbers — free of all interference by the executive, or even the judicial department — is as 
old as the first parliament ihat ever held a session. Let us consider, for one moment, the con- 
sequences of a different doctrine. Wherever a protest was filed, as these executive minutes 
show, Governor Reeder set aside the election — although, in one case, the protestants were the 
unsuccessful candidates. No testimony was adduced ; no trial was allowed ; nor was any no- 
tice given. And so, it would seem, elections are to be vacated, members elect deprived of their 
offices, the right of representation taken from the people, and, practically, the whole ■legisljai''"^ 
power usurped by the governor,'as often as defeated candidates choose to protest against the 
result! Granted, if you please, that illegal votes were cast, by the hundred, in these districts ; 
it did not follow, by any means, that all the illegal votes were given for the successful candi- 
dates ; or that, rejecting them, the successful candidates had not a clear majority of legal 
votes. y 

If, by the Kansas organic act. Congress had conferred upon the Governor (as some suggest) 
the power to set aside an election, and order a new one, Congress would have transgressed its 
own authority, and the provision would have been altogether void. What! Mr. President, arm 
one man with a right to unseat councillors and representatives ; give certifiates to whoever he 
may like ; order new elections at his own pleasure ! What is this, I ask, but unlimited and des- 
potic control of the government ? It would not be a legislature, sir, that wasso constituted. 
It would be a mere cabal, not appointed by the people, to register tlie Governor's own decrees. 
f grant that, by the twenty-second section of the organic law for Kansas Territory, the Gov- 
ernor was a returning officer — that it was his duty to receive and canvass the returns of the 
first election, and wherever the returns were regular, upon their face, grant certificates to the 
parties thereby appearing to have been elected. 

Ifthe returns were informal or irregular in any material respect, he might, perhaps, refuse the 
certificates of election. He was to declare the result from the official returns made to him, and 
not from protests, affidavits, or papers of that description. He was, to be sure, a judge of the 
fact ; bjut the lav/ prescribed what evidence, and what only, he should receive. 



In case of equal votes, in case of death, resignation, or vacancy of that kind, the Governor 
could order a new election ; but he could notwa/ce a vacancy, and then order it to be filled — 
whether by a new election, or otherwise. That power belonged, exclusively and inherently, 
to the Council as respected its members, and to the. House as r-spect-^d its members. ' There 
is no other body known to the constitution," said Chancellor Kent, " to which such a power 
mijjht safely he trusted." (Cou.mentaries, vol. l,sec. 11.) 

Let us take the case, Mr. President, as I have supposed it. In seven districts, including three 
councillors and nine representatives, the election was not only illegal, but the returns were in- 
formal, and even fatally defective. Govirnor Reeder declined to gve certificates to the parties 
having the highest number of votes. I do not complain of that; but he had no right to order 
a new election, either on the 22d of May, or at any other lime. There was a gMo»-u»n of the 
members, in each house, duly elected ; he had ascertained ihi\t — declared it — given certificates 
to the parties. Here, sir, he should have left the business ; and upon the two houses, when 
csseinbled, v^as devolved the task of examining the elections in all the distri'Hs — not upon the 
returns alone, but to the full extent and very matter of fact. I have no doubt, for these rea- 
^ions, that the election ordered by Governor Reeder, on the 22d of Vlay, was entirely unautho- 
rized find void ; and that it was the duty of each house, aa soon as the legislature had been or- 
ganized, to examine the election of March 30, 1855, in all the contested districts, reject the ille- 
gal votes, count the legal ones, and decide which of the candidates were, in fact, chosen at that 
(ilection ; or, in case tiiis could not be ascertaincl, to annid the election, and order a new one. 
Let us see, then, whether the two houses did any more ; whether, as alleged, they exceeded 
their right and their duty as a legi4atuie. On the fir^t day of the session, July 2, the House 
of Representatives adopted this resolution : 

"That all persons who may desire to contest the seats of any persons now holding certifi- 
cates of election as members of this House may present their protes's to the Committee oo 
Credentials, and that notice thereof shall be given to the persons holding such certificates." 

That every legislative body has the power, even without a contest, to inquire into the right 
of its members to their seats, is very clear, and afl^rmed by a multitude of precedents. Nowhere 
has it been exercised more frequently, perhaps, than by one or the other House of the Ohio 
legislature. 

The Commiitre on Cre'dentials procecfled, under this authority, to examine the case of each 
member, as well of those who assumed to have been elected on the 22d of May aa of those who 
' had received certificates at the regular (March) election. What was the result? Out of twenty- 
two members present — there were but twenty-six in all — the right of fifteen members was af- 
firmed by unanimous voice. As to the other seven cases, it would appear, four members of 
the committee (out of five) reported,' " having heard and examined all the evidence touching the 
rnatter of inquiry before them,'''' ihai the gentlemen who received the highest number tif votes 
on the 30th of March were duly elected ; or, in other words, counting the legal votes alone 
upon the law and the testimony adduced, the illegal votes did not change or at all affect the result. 

And now, Mr. President, on what pretext did the fifth committee-man dis?ent.' Did he deny 
the fact of election by legal votes on the 30ih of March ' No, sir, nothing of the kind. It was 
upon the pretext that Governor Reeder had, by law, the final, exclusive, ■ nd absolute right to 
decide the election of the members; and as he had set aside the choice made in seven districts 
on the 30th of March, the House could inquire no further. 1 have shown that this proposition 
was not only devoid of authority in the statute, butcontrary to all the law, written and unwritten, 
that ever existed. It only remains to show, therefore, what the claim was, and here I find it, 
sir, in the protest of the rejected members: 

. "We, the undersigned, members of the House of Representatives of Kansas Territory, be- 
lieve the organic act org nizing tlie said Territory gives this House no power to oust any mem- 
ber from this House who has. received a certificate from the governor ; that this Hoxise cannoE 
go behind an election called by the governor, and consider any claims based on a prior election. 
We would, therefore, protest against such a proceeding, and ask this protest to be spread upon 
the journal of this House." 

The proceedings in the Council, I, understand, were of like character. 

One suggestion more. Whatever speech Governor Reeder may have made at Easton, in Pen- 
Kylvania, or elsewhere, prior tr> his removal from oflice, there is no occasion, when he was called 
to. act as governor, that he did not affirm the title of the legislature as a regularly elected and 
constituted body in all imaginable forms — by messa£es and other appropriate' recognitions — 
until the day (August IC) when he was removed. He denied the right of the two houses to ad- 
journ their session from Pawnee City, and he applied the veto pov/er several times uj on that 
ground alone. Certain it is, therefore — until they crossed the path of his expected fortune, until 
they removed from his city of Pawnee, on the western verge of the .settlements, to the Shawnee 
Mission — the members of the legislature had no cause to suspect that he disputed their authori- 
ty as rightfully elected councillor-s and representatives. 

Th.it ihe removal was perfectly legal, as well as expedient, I do not entertain a doubt; and 
fir ourselves, at least, no senator has attc^ched any importance, thus far, to that topic, on which 
(he^Governor addressed the Territorial legislature at such length, and which he made" the fiist 



9 

pretext of his disobedience to the Territorial laws. You have on your table, Mr. President, 
the proceedings of a court-itiartial by which an officer of the army was tried and dismissed the 
service for lending: his influeice — such, at all events, was the charij;e — to advance the specula- 
tion of Governor Reeder in the Pawnee military r serve. On his p:.rt, I am force 1 to conclude, 
the assertion of illeii;ality at the March elpcti m — except in the seven contested districts — was 
a mere afterthought, and adopted only when his first excuse had proved to be unavailable. 

But, sir, even if we jillow that the Council and the House erred, or acted improperly, in ad- 
mitting three councillors and six representatives who had never been elected, what would il 
matter? The majority of each House hud been rightfully chosen ; and the decision, though 
erroneous, or otherwise improper, is final and conclusive in lav. So it is, sir, with the. judg- 
ment of couris, and 1 have known many of them which I deemed erroneous, and even some 
which 1 deemed partial. 

The senator from Vermont suggested, in his speech, that the admission of the councillors 
and representatives for the seven districts robbed the governor of his veto power. But that, sir, 
is a pure mistake. There were only three 'coutc'llors out of thirteen in these districts — not one- 
fourth of the whole number ; and even if ihi^y hiid voted to sustain a veto nifssage, no differenl 
result wotild have been attained. But the senator lays stress chiefly upon the House, ina.'-much 
as there were twenty-six members in all, and nme of them (little more than one-third) repre- 
sented the contested districts 

But, as the senator from Illinois suggested, three of tHe^e nine were re-elected on the 92d o?' 
May at Governor Reeder's own election ; and the question turns really u|>on the case of sy.- 
members — less than one-fourth of the whole number. And, besides, the functions of ilie 
House are at an end, and new members must be chosen in October. 

The veto messages were overruled in each instance by votes nearly or quite unanimous, an. 1 
none of them were upan questions of any impor anc,e except the removal of the legislature to 
the Shawnee Mission. 

Whichever way we turn, therefore, the resu'is of the election in the seven contested district? 
make no difference at all. More than three-fourths of the members in each house werelrgally 
•entithd to net and vote as members ; and the statutes which they enacted (except in so far as 
those statutes may contiaveiie the constitution of the United States, or the provisions of the 
Kansas act) are as volid and binding as any laws ever enacted ; and if there be one obnoxious 
to the objection just excepted, in whole or in part, the courts are open, and all pers^ ns ag- 
gri< ved may thete find redress 

Mr Pies^ident, even if the case were not thus irrefutable Bt every point, no justification couli^ 
bf made for the course pursued by Governor P>eeder and his a!-eociates at the convention oi 
the Big Springs, anil af^tei wards at 'I'opeka. The two houses whirh tis.'^embled at Pawm C ty. 
end thence adjoun ed to the Shawnee Mis.«ion, constituted the Territoiistl legislature of Kansa,'? 
de facto, even if ihe e'ection of IV arch 30, \B^5. hfidbefn irrfgularand illegal in evtry jrfcinct. 
Noi by an appeal to Sh^ rpe's rifles, or any arbiter of that dac ip'ion, can questions of title or 
lef;a' right be stithd. The artsof an dfficer de facto, whether elected or not, are vahd, nnd, as 
re.-pf-cts the public, *are corclusive. Whilst I had the honor of occupyit.g a seat in thp Ohi-^ 
leg stature,' six or seven years ago, thotisonds of the people believed — erroneously, sir, of 
course — that I had never t'Cfn elected. IVlany of the statutes ei acted at that session were 
passed by a majnrity of one vote, and the vote was my ovyn. Judges and other officeis were 
elected liy the decision of my vote ; but I never heard that any man disobeyed the judt'es cr 
resisted the ttaiutes, because he believed that I had no right to vote for the one or ihf other. 

1 repeat, sir, that the acts of an officer defacin, whether executive, legislative, oi judical, are 
not only valid, but, as respects the public, are conclusive. This doctrine has been announced 
time and again by thecourts of Engiland and Ameiica : it has beene.^'ahbshpd, beyond ad dis- 
pute, for more than two hundred yeors. (Tlie State t)s. Ailing, 12 Ohio Rep., 16. Scovil t>». 
the city of Cleveland, 21 Ohio Rep., 16. ^coville vs. the city bf Cleveland, 21 Ohio Rep., J26. 
The People vs. Hopson, I Denio, 574. Greenleaf rs. Low, 4 Denio, 170.) 

] have already notic d the suggestion that certain ;5tatutP8 enacted by the Territorial legisla- 
tuie are intolerable, and that Congress should interpose in some manner to prevent the oppres- 
sion thereby thieatened. The prcmblsof the resolutions adopted by the Ohio legislature ar"- 
ffirms that '* such rest'iclions" have befn imposed " upoti the right of suffrage at future elec- 
tions as will exclude the opponei ts of slavery from the polls." If the " Opponents of slavery"' 
are those only who disregard theo'.ligatiyns of the constitution of the United States — who live 
under our beneficent form of government, and enjoy all it advantages, but refuse to acknowledge 
its authority, or submit to its laws — then, perhapp, they are excluded from the right of suffrage 
in Kansas, as they might well be excluded everywhere. What are tlie " restrictio^a" im- 
posed.' That the voter shall, if challenged, take an oath to support the Kansas Territorial act, 
and the two acts of Congress for the redelivery of fugitive slaves. Where is the injustice of 
this provision ? The organic act is the constitution of the Territory, and to be respeced, during 
the Territorial condition, as the constitution of a State is respected by its citizens. What is 
more common, sir, than to exact fr m the voter, when challenged, an oath to support the cor*- 
stiiiition of his State' This does not oblige him to approve the constitution as a measure, be: 
only to promise that, whdeit continues in force as the constitution, he will obey it, as rdl paJ- 
riotic, well-behaved, peaceable citizens do. The Kansas statute has precisely this extent. No 
man is required to approve the principles of the organic act, or of the acts relating to fugitive 



10 

slaves, but merely to swear that he will not violate those laws — promulgated as they have been 
by competent authority — so long as they continue in force. I can discover no reasonable ob- 
jection to this. The organic act, T have said, is the Territorial constitution : it declares (sec- 
tion 28) that the acts of February 12, 1793, and September 18, 1850, for the redelivery of fugi- 
tive slaves, shall extend to the Territory of Kansas, and thus gives them all the effect of a fun- 
damental provision. Those who cannot live under such a code of laws, therefore, need not be- 
come inhabitants of the Territory, or, if in it, need not remain there. They have no honest 
claim to vote — no more than an inhabitant of Ohio, whose conscience is so tender or so morbid 
(whichever you please) that he will not swear to support the constitution of the State. 

But, sir, the case of Kansas in this particular does not stand alone. The ordinance of July 
13, 1787, required of the governor, judges, and other officers, an oath or affirmation of " fideli- 
ty," as well as the ordinary official oath or affirmation, and that contained a provision, neces- 
sarily, that they would maintain the six articles of compact. The sixth and last article stipu- 
lated, in express terms, that all fugitive slaves should be redelivered to the masters from whom 
they had escaped. 

Another criticism has been made sometimes upon this statute — namely, that it does not re- 
quire a qualification of residence, but allows any man tb vote, whether resident or non-resident, 
on paying a tax of one dollar. This allegation is entirely erroneous. The statute defines the 
qualification of the voter in clear and explicit language : 

" Every free white male citizen of the United States, and every free male Indian who is made 
a citizen by treaty or otherwise, and over the age of twenty-one years, who shall be an inhab- 
itant of this Territory, and of the county or district in which he offers to vote, and shall have 
paid a Territorial tax, shall be a qualified elector for all elective officers." 

The voter, you observe, must be an inhabitant ; and, if so, he cannot be a non-resident. The 
two descriptions are perfectly incompatible. To be sure, no previous term of residence is pre- 
scribed ; but that has not been usual in the Territories, or even the new States, where the ob- 
ject is to invite immigration by all reasonable inducements. No such term of residence was 
prescribed in the ordinance of July 13, 1787, for those who had been citizetis ofanyof the 
States. 

As to the stipulation that each voter should have paid a Territorial tax — against which some 
objections are urged — it is only what the first constitution of Ohio required. The same stipu- 
lation has been made also in most of the other States ; and at this very session the Senate 
passed a bill for the District of Columbia, in which it may be found— and without any objec- 
tion. 

It is true, sir, that one of these Territorial taxes was a poll tax of one dollar : but the voter 
need not have paid that if he had paid any other tax assessed for Territorial purposes. Nor, 
if any man had paid it, would that render him " an inhabitant" of the Territory, or au- 
thorize him to vole. I am not a friend of poll taxes ; I have always admired that provision in 
the first constitution of Ohio by which poll taxes were prohibited forStatt* or county purposes. 
But such taxes are levied in other States, and, among others, in the State of Massachusetts. 
Why, then, all this tirade against them in the Territory of Kansas.' 

. The Ohio resolutions affirm, also, that the legislature of Kansas appointed " its own creatures" 
to all the Territorial offices — by which elegant phraseology is meant, 1 suppose, that the officers 
were chosen by the legislature. This, to a very limited extent, is true, but, in the main, is a 
gross mistake. The only officers to be chosen by the legislature, permanently, are the auditor 
and treasurer of the Territory, and district attorneys ; and these are chosen for periods of four 
years. The law of Kansas, in this particular, follows the first constitution of Oliio— a constitu- 
tion under which, for almost forty-nine years, the State enjoyed a degree of prosi^erity second 
to that of no community, either in ancient or modern times. That constitution provided for 
the election of the secretary of State, treasurer of State, auditor of State, judges of the supreme 
and common pleas courts, any many other officers, by the legislature, and for periods of sei- 
vice varying from three to seven years. 

The laws of Kansas declare also, ;that until the election of October, 1857, a probate judge, 
two commissioners, and a sheriff in each county, shall be chosen by the legislature ; but ther , 
and always thereafter, those officers are to be chosen by the people. The necessity for their 
election by the legislature temporarily is quite plain, inasmuch as by the organic law (section 
"25) the commissions of all officers appointed by the governor expired at the adjournment of the 
legislature. Without such an election, therefore, the Territory would have been bereft of sul- 
ordidsteand local officers. The probate judge and the commissioners together appoir.t jus- 
tices of the peace, constables, and county officers. In this respect also the laws of Kansas pur- 
sue the first constitution and early statutes of Ohio. By the constitution the legislature elected 
three associate judges in each county ; and these judges for a long while appointed the clerk, 
attorney, and other county officers. The sheriff and the coroner alone were elected by the peo- 
ple. Of course, sir, the members of the Ohio legislature could not have been ignornnt of tlie his- 
tory of their own State ; but they were so anxious to remove a mote from the eye of their 
neighbor, as to have forgotten the good advice of the Scriptures. 

It has been objected, also that most of the laws were copied, without alteration, from the re- 
visedstatutes of Missouri I sse nothing objectionable in this. The legislature acted wisely 
r.deed when it availed itself of the care and learning with which the atatutcs of Missouri had 



11 

been compiled, remodeled, and consolidated into a regvilar code. But, sir, those who make the 
objection should recollect that, by their favorite ordinance of July 13, 1787, the governor and 
iudajes were forbidden to adopt any law for the Northwestern Territory, unless it had been 
copied from the statute-book of some one of the States. 

The senator from Vermont, however, complains chiefly of the eleventh and twelfth sections 
of an act for the definition and punishment of certain offences. The eleventh section is in these 
words : 

" If any person print, write, introciuce into, publish, or circulate, or cause to be brought into, 
printed, written, published, or circulated, or shall knowingly aid or assist in bringing into, 
printing, publishing, or circulating within this Territory, any book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, 
nandbill, or circular, containing any etatement.s, arguments, opinions, sentiments, doctrines, 
advice, or innuendo, c«lculated to promote a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellious disaffection 
among the slaves in this Territory, or to induce such slaves to escape from the service of their 
masters, or to resist their authority, he shall be guilty of a felony, iuid be punished by impri- 
sonment and hard labor for a term not less than five years." 

The purport of this enactment is not (as the senator imagines) to punish a man for declaring, 
in print or otherwise, that slavery is an injurious or improper institution, but for attempting to 
promote a servile insurrection ; or, in the very words of the act, "promote a disorderly, dan- 
gerous, or rebellio.us |disafftction among the slaves of the Territory," or " induce such slaves 
to escape from the service of their masters." Sir, 1 regret the necessity for such legislation ; 
but, wherever slavery exi.«ts as an institution, laws of that character must be adopted. Gover- 
nor Reeder as«:ured the legislature of its power in this respect hy his inaugural message " A 
Territorial legislature," he said, " may undoubtedly act upon the question to a limitrd and par- 
tial extent, and may temporarily prohibit, tolerate, or regulate slavery in the Territory, and in 
an absolute or modiiied form, with all the force and effect of any other legislative act, binding 
until repealed by the same power that enacted it." 

No, if the legislature had a right to " tolerate or regulate slavery" in the Territory, it had 
the right to provide — and was under a solemn obligation to provide — against insurrection and 
rebellion among the slaves ; and any man anywhere in the United States, who publishes or 
circulates a " book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, handbill, or circular," inciting other men, 
black or white, to overthrow the established government by force, to disturb the peace of the 
community, to resist the execution of the laws — no matter with what excuse he fortifies such 
conduct — deserves to be punished. His offence, at common law, is that of publishing a sedi- 
tious libel, and punishable with more severity, far more, than is prescribed in the Kansas statute. 

To call an act which holds men accountable for publications calculated and intenaed to 
excite a uervile insurrection, with a\\ its horrors of bloodshed and rapine, an assault on the 
liberty of speech or of the press, is a m.ere trick of language, and, if generally admitted, would 
end in the destruction of those two inestimable rights. The true doctrine is expressed, sir, 
in all our State constitutions — namely, that no citizen shnll be subject to censorship liefore- 
hand, but shall be responsible for an "abuse" of hie privilege, detrimental to the public or 
individuals by indictment or private action. The Kansas statute, I repeat, does not forbiJ 
any one to publish a fair discussion of slavery, its objectionable features, its evil conse-. 
quences — not at all. It only punishes the offence of stimulating slaves to rebellion or to rtin 
away from the service of their masters, and to that extent, in my opinion, it is defensible. 
No well-behaved citizen need ever stand in fear of its penalties. 

The twelfth section is of a character quite different : 

" If any free person, by speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that persons have not the 
right 10 hold slaves in this Tcfritory, or shall introduce into this Territory, print, publish, 
write, circulate, or cause to be introduced into this Territory, written, printed, published, or 
circulated in this Territory any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet, or circular, containing any 
denial of the right of persons to hold slaves in this Territory, such person shall be deemed 
guilty of felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard ISbor for a term of not less than 
two years." 

This, perhaps, does not embrace a publication discussing the character of slavery as an 
institution, or even the question of its establishment; it relates to a denial of the authority of 
the legislature in the premises. So it was interpreted by the governor, the judges, the attor- 
ney, the marshal, and many of the councillors and representatives, in the address published at 
Leavenworth, November 14, 1855 : 

"There is nothing in the act itself, as has been charged, to prevent a free discussion of the 
subject of slavery. Its bearing on society, its morality or expediency, or whether it would 
be politic or impolitic to make this a slave State, can be discussed here as freely as in any 
State in this Union, without infringing any of the provisions of the law. To deny the rif nt 
of a person to hold slaves under the law in this Territory is made penal, but beyond this 
there is ro restriction to the discussion of the slavery question in any aspect in which it is 
capable of being considered." 

Neither this section nor the eleventh, I understand, ha ever been executed; nor, indeed, 



12 

>.as their execution been attempted. In the peculiar circumstances of the Territoij", liowerer, 
i think the twelfth section was unjust ; and, as it might be abused by a corrupt magistrate, I 
vish to see it abrogated. Such legislation has become too fashionable of late years, whenever 
men are embittered against their opponents. 

But, sir, in respect to penal statutes, the present legislature of Ohio is not above criticism. 
One of the houses has passed a bill — which the other is ex|,ected to pass likewise at the 
adjourned session — whereby the sale, or even the gift, of a glass of wine, beer, ale, or cider, 
■ n any circumstances, is made punishable by a fine for the first transgression, and by imprison- 
ri.ient as well as fine in the second. Yes, sir, those v/hp complain of severity in Kan.'ias legis- 
lation have actually declared that if a man should find his neighbor by the roadside, weary, 
sick, or wounded, and, either for the sake of love or money, should relieve that neighbor with 
oil and wine — as the good Samaritan did — he ought to be hauled before some justice of the 
rcace, and summarily as well as severely punished. And I suppose if our Saviour were to 
'■ome again upon earth, and repeat the miracle which He performed in Cana of Gali'ee, instead 
of being overwhelmed with gratitude for so beneficent an exhibitio'n of the Divine power, they 
would condemn him to the pillory or the slocks. 

Indeed, Mr. President, the vagaries of legislation, and especially of penal otatutps, are so 
strange, and even so ludicrous, that one should hardly treat them with an argument. The 
•visest of statesmen have not been exempt from such follies. In the model code proposed by 
.""efferson, for the definition and punishment of crimes, I find this secJion : 

*' All attempts to delude the people, or to abuse their understanding, by exercise of the 
rretended arts of witchcraft, conjuration, enchantment, or sorcery, or by pretended prophecies, 
shall be punished by ducking and whipping, at the discretion of a jury, not exceeding fifteen 
•tripes." 

Under such a law, I fear, several senators on the other side (my colleague included) would 
be in danger — to the extent, probably, of the fifteen stripes — for their " pretended'" prophesies, 
often repeated, as to the results of the next presidential election. 

Mr. President, it is due to myself, as well as to others, that I should confess how widely I 
misapprehended this pari of the subject at the commencement of our session. I had read in 
we newspapers, and certainly believed, that none were admitted to the right of suflTrage in fu" 
*.are elections except those who would take an oath to maintain the entire body of statutes 
adopted by the Territorial legislature ; and it is quite probable, sir, that in conversation and 
correspondence frequently, I have declared such an enactment to be unjust in principle, and in- 
iiefensible anywhere. 

The venerable senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass] suggested, in his able and thoroughly 
patriotic speech, that it would become us — the supporters of the Nebraska bill — to adopt some 
tdir and moderate course in reference to these Territorial statutes. I always listen to his coun- 
ieis with pleasure ; hut never, sir, did I listen with more pleasure, with more gratitude, than 
en that occasion. I believe it would be wise, prudent, and, upon the whole, equitable, calcu- 
Uteil to allay, in a great measure, the excitement which now prevails in some of the northern 
i§tix(es, and satisfactory, I hope, to well-disposed citizens everywhere, if Congress should undo 
:he restrictions and tests contained in these acts of the Territorial legislature. To be sure, as I 
have shown, they are not without the color of precedent, but such precedents, after all, are bet- 
ler avoided than imitated. 

The Territorial statutes, however objectionable, did not provoke the insurrectionary move- 
.'aent in Kansas, It began ere they had been enacted, and it has continued without the least re- 
gard to their operation or effect. That is demonstrated clearly in the report submitted by the 
sflnator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] as chairman of the Committee on Territories. 

Whence, then, have arisen these discords and troubles.'' From the unauthorized interruption 
cf the citizens of Missouri, in great part, as I believe — but deeper than all that, as the real and 
?seponsible cause, from the establishment of an organized company, incorporated by the legis" 
i.iture of Massachusetts, to invade the Territory and take possession of it, to render ineffectual 
:lie competition of individuals, to forestall the settlement of that question which the organic act 
iiad left to the calm, deliberate, and peaceable decision of the people. The operations of the 
company were not as extensive, nor us important, perhaps, as they have sometimes been repre- 
sented -, buttliey have led, nevertheless, to all the controversies, all the serious quarrels, all the 
nioodshed, with which Kansas has been cursed to this hour. They have separated into hostile 
■'actions, arrayed with arms against each other, a body of settlers who should have devoted all 
:,-:eir energies to the maintenance of peace and the foundation of a new an 1 great Common- 
wealth. My colleague has several times asserted, with great excitement of manner, that citi- 
::«?ns of the Free State party (so called) have been " murdered in cold blood" by their antago- 
rssts ; but only such excitement could have prevented his detecting the absurdity of this asaer- 
ison. Men of both parties have been killed, houses burned, and other property injured or de- 
scroyed. But there has been no " cold blood" in all this : it has been hot blood on both sides — 
r-iood heated by a thousand incentives to strife. The inhabitants were (and I fear atill are) en- 
mged at each other ; and have sacrificed all that is dear to both parties, thus far, at the instance 
ar.d for the pleasure of political aspirants. It is not so much the question, in my judgment, 
whether Kansas shall be a slaveholding or a non-slaveholding State, as whether the men of one 
fiction or of the other shall be exalted to power. 



i 



13 

i do not infeiT^ to speak of the Massacliusetts Emigrant Aid Company at length. The sena- 
tor from Alabama [IVl. Ci-ayJ has exposed its purposes and its conduct with sm-Ji accuracy 
of detail, such ilearness of perception, that little is left, for the rest of us. I wisli to notice, 
however, a sufrgestion to which the senators from New York and Massachusetts attached so 
much importance. It is that the corporation violated no law ; and, as for comity bttween the 
States, Wf. have no rules upon that subject, except those which are expressed m the federal 
constituiion. Sir, if senators stand upon this doctrine, where (let me ask them) did the State 
of Massfi. huselts find authority to ere itc a corporation whose business was to be conducted 
without her own limits, and chiefly within the, Hnriits of another government .' Shp hud no 
authority for that ; and, if we siiould apply a strict rule to her actions, the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany would be condemned at once. It could not make any contract or munafre any enter- 
prise beyond her own limits, and far less hold property in Kansas. It is upon the rule of 
comity alone that the corporations of one State are allowed to transact busine-^s, or even l)rin» 
suite, m another Stute— a rule of comity, moreover, which is not expressed in the federal con° 
stitution Let us hear what the Supreme Court has said : 

" It is very true that a corporation can have no legal existence out of the bound ries of the 
sovereignty by which it is created. It exists only in contemplation of law a«,d by furce of the 
law ; and where that law ceases to operate, and is no longer obligatory, the corporation can 
have no existence, li must dwell in the place of its creation, and cannot migrate to another 
.sovereignty."— (r/ie Bank of Jhtgusta vs. Earle, 13 Peters, 588.) 

I counsel those t.vo senators, therefore, to look beyond the letter of the constitution in this 
respect, and to govern themselves ratlier by the wholesome idea on which our ftdenl govern- 
ment is founde t — that of equality between the States and non-intervention of one State with 
the don.esiic affairs of another. Upon this idea we know the Kansas act intended to estab- 
lish forever the i.ohcy of our Territorial governments. In the true sense of the question, 
tnen, this Massachust^tis corpiration did violate the law — many luM-s — in a most M-ijful and 
officious manner. It violated the law of comity between the States ; it violated the principles 
of the Kansas Territorial act ; it violated the faith pledged in our federal cor;stitut'on. In 
another re.'pect, also, the corporation has greatly offended. How, except by a sheer perver- 
sion of our statutes, did the company acquire title to section after section of the public lands 
in exclusion of individual settlers, and with a view (as its circular declares) to .^el) them 
hereafer at an advanced price, and divide the profits among its Massachusetts stockholders- 
Was such the desit;n of your pre-emption laws.' No, sir. It is a violation of those lows ; a 
bold and reckless attempt to seize the best portions of the public domain, in fraud of the rights 
of actual settlers, for the conjoint purposes of private profit and sectional agitation. I never 
heard— I cannot even imagine— a more palpable outrage, as well ngninst the laws f;f the United 
States as against the peace of the Territory and the rights of individual citizens every where 
than this emigrant aid contrivance. It has been lauded by its friend.^, here and elsewhere; 
but I believe it to be a gigantic engine of mischief and wickedness. It has filled the Terri- 
tory with confusion and bloodshed ; h.-'s exasperated the two sections of the Union ai-ainst 
each other ; has led to those horrid scenes of ribaldry at which all Pandemonium rejoiced^— 
scenes where 

" The Priest 

Turns Atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled 

"With lust and violence the. house of God." 

In Massachusetts, to be Fure, it is a moneyed corporation, and it appears even in Kansas 
only as a landed proprietor. But, sir, beneath these garbs we find p seciet, oath-bcund, 
political and military organization, with its "grand general" at Lawrence, its "gnnd vice- 
general" at Topeka, its "grand paymaster" at Leavenworth, its colonels, oihcers, sentinels, 
soldiers, and recruits, in every neighborhood. 

I have said, sir, that Nebraska and Kansas were establi.shed by one law. Nebraska has 
had peace, KaiiStis only confusion. Towards Kansas the Emigrant Aid Company directed 
its operations ; Nebraska it left alone. Herein consists the whole diflerence ! 

Thus far, Mr. President, of the questions directly before the ■'^enate. But the resolutions of 
the Ohio legislature embrace other and kindred topics, on which many senators have spoken 
■at, leiitcih. I :-hall ^>e pardoned, I trust, for a similar digression. 

. Some of those senators declare that Congress has the right, under the Constitution, to pro- 
hibit slavery in the Territories ; that by the Kansas act of May 30, 1854, Congress abdicated 
its authority in an improper manner : and that the effectual method of obviating a:l difficulties 
(if we nject the Slate constitution now proposed) would be to restore the prohibition contained 
ii> the act of March G, IbiO, section eight. The resolutions of the Ohio legislature assert, 
moreover, that those who framed our federal government designed to prohibit the institution 
of African slavery in ail the Territories, and, thereby, the creation of new slaveholding 
States. 

The senators from Vermont and Iowa do not claim so much. They claim, however, that the 
intention wae to tolerate sLivery wherever it then existed in the Territories, and prevent its es- 
tablishment wherever it did not exist. 

I deny all these propositions. I believe that Congress has no authority over the citizens of 



14 

the United States inhabiting trie Teriitc lies, except to provide for the protection of their jrr- 
sons and property against violence, or other wrongful aggression, until such time as they are 
able, by tlie adoption of a State government, to protect themselves. I believe that Congress has 
no /fots/flliwe power (properly so called) over the Territories, and its whole authority is tha: of 
. a landed proprietor, and u trustee of sovereignty for the inhabitants. Beyond this limit — be- 
yond the right to control the use and disposition of the public domain, and so far abridge the 
political action of the inhabitants as to preserve their allegiance to the federal government, and 
ultimately admit them as a State into the Union — beyond this limit, I say, all exertions of 
power by Congress amount mere'y to usurpation. 

It follows, Mr. President, that the fathers of the republic did not, in my opinion, propose 
either to restrain or encourage, establish or abolish, the institution cf slavery in the Territo- 
iies, or anywhere else. 

The senator from Vermont has said, with deliberate emphasis, that the Constitution does not 
recognise properly in men. I might answer, with equal emphasis, that it nowhere defines, or 
even indicates, what shall or what shall not be properly in the United State?, except where it 
ipeaks of the public domain, forts, arsenals, and the like. That was not the office of the Con- 
stitution. It established a government which, as respects our own people, is purely fedirn] in 
character, and has no concern with the rights of property, except as they are defined by the 
laws of the several States. And, sir, it so happens that the only species of property to which 
a special protection was vouchsafed in tiie Constitution, is the right of one man to the " ser- 
vice or labor" of another. Whether this be property, in strictness of acceptation, I care not 
to decide. It is a right founded upon the laws of a State, and guarantied by the express com- 
pact Of all the States. 

Both these senators have been challenged, as others of their sect have been challengefj, in 
times past, to specify the language cf the Constitution from which they derive the vast cor- 
gressional power now claimed ; but no lai guage is adduced, after all, except that of article 
fourth, and section third : 

"The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations 
respecting the Territory or other property belonging to the United States.'* 

This section does not confer any legislative power, nor does it even speak of any subject over 
which legislative power can be exercised. It merely declares that Congress, as an agent, shall 
exercise the proprietorship of the lands and other property of the Union. For, Mr. President, 
iet us observe : 

1. The power of disposition is quite aS large and as absolute as that of regulation ; and if 
Congress could legislate, in a political sense, for the inhabitants of a Territory, it could, in 
exercise of the power of disposition, transfer their allegiance to some foreign government, or 
even to an individual, by a mere alienation of title to the land. 

2. The language is " the territory," " belonging to the United States," and not, as often mis- 
quoted, the TerrUorics (plural) of the United States. In other words, the section refers to l.ie 
public lands, as such, and not in any political sense — the public lands within the limits of & 
State, as well as those without. And henee the section proceeds in the alternative, " :ne 
teiritoi-y or other property belonging to the United States." 

The Senator from Iowa calls for the judicial decisions upon this point, and I shall endep.vcr 
now to satisfy him. 
In the case of Gratiot and others, 14 Peters, 537, the Supreme Court said : 

" The term territory, as here used, is' merely descriptive of one kind of property, arfd is 
equivalent to the word lands." 

In the case of Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 3 Howard, 221, the court said : 

" We think a proper examination of this subject will show that the United States never held 
any municipal sovereignty, jurL-sdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which A.a- 
bama, or any of the new States, was formed, except for temporary purposes." 

These purposes the court define to be an execution of" the trusts " created by the deeds or 
treaties of cession — namely, the trusts of providing for the organization of a new State, and its 
admission into the Union. 

The senator from Vermont has ridiculed, as very absurd, that provision of the organic act 
which extends the Constitution of the United States over the Territory of Kansas, and asked, 
■with an air of triumph, "Who ever supposed that the Constitution did not, ex propria vigore, 
prevail in all the Territories?" I might answer, as the 'senator from Illinois has ansv/ered, that 
Daniel Webster supposed so, and made an elaborate argument in this chamber to prove it ; tut 
I have another authority to the same effect, namelj', the Supreme Court of the United Stfftes. 
In the case cited by the senator himself — the facts of which, by the way, he misapprehended 
altogether — the case of the American Insurance Company v. Canter,! Peters, 511, it was 
decided that the courts of a Teriite«ry are not constitutional courts, and, n^cessari'y, that the 
Constitutix^n does not extend to the 'I'erritories by the force of its own provisions. 

The Constitution is fur the States alone; it is the Constitution of the United States, and not 
of th^ Territories, or even of the States and the Territories together. Its authors never dreamed 



i 



15 

of a Territorial government to be created by Congress, and, o course, made no provision for- 
any such government. At the time the Constitution was signed, in September, 1787, every 
acre of land which had then been ceded by the States, of which they had the least knowledge 
or conception, was embraced by the ordinance of the Continental Congress, adopted in July'ot" 
that year. This ordinance purported, by its own terms, to be an irrevocable compact becwee!: 
the citizens of the original Slates and those who should inhabit the territory in all future time. 
1 acknowledge, iVlr. President, that, under the power to make treaties, the feceral govtrnmen' 
can acquire territory ; as, also, that the power of conquest is incident to the power of levying; 
war. But the framers of the Constitution did not dream that an opportunity for annexation oT 
conquest would ever present itself; they had no conception of the importance of the wester;; 
country, and far less of our splendid empire beyond the Mississippi river and upon the Pacifir 
coast. 

The region west of the Mississippi, as well as that bordering upon the Mexican gulf,- be- 
longed to Spain — then the most splendid of the European monarchies, and one which ha.> 
always pursued the policy of sacrificing the happiness of her people at home in order to main- 
tain the integrity of her foreign dominion. The framers of our Constitution did not contemplate 
an extension of the Union in any direction- Canada had a standing invitation, for nine year.? 
in the articles of confederation; and as she did not accept it during Uiat period, all hopes of he: 
accession were abandoned. I have not said, sir, that the framers of the Constitution were 
opposed to an extension of our boundaries. They saw no probability of it, and therefore mad- 
no provision for territories thus to be acquired. Let us not wonder, consequently, at the view.^ 
entertained by Mr. Jefferson at the time of the Louisiana purchase, and his suggestion Of sucl; 
an amend.ment to the Cor.stitution as would affirm that exercise of power. Unhappily, sir, the 
advice was not adopted; for in his time, before abolitionism had arisen to disturb the peace of 
the Union, some fair, wise, and just provision could have been made upon this subject in tho 
Constitution. 

As. a j[;oZiA>ffZ government had been established for all the territory supposed to belong to th* 
United States at that time, under the ordinance of July, 1787, the Constitutional Conventioh 
deemed it only expedient to provide for the disposition and management of the public lands as th' 
property of the Union. And hence the clause to which 1 have referred not merely fails to con- 
for legislative or political dominion over the Territories, but a proposition of that character wain 
entirely rejected. Thus, on the 18th of August, 1787, it was moved, in the convention, tha: 
Congress should have power — ; 

"To dispose of the unappropriated lands of the United States ; 

" To institute temporary governments /or the 7iew States arising therein.''''^ 

The first proposition was adopted, and is expressed, substantially, in the Constitution : the 
second was rejected. 

But, sir, the Constitution affords us additional evidence. Its framers understood the wid-* 
distinction between a clause authorizing Congress to make " rules and regulations" for th- 
disposition or management of the public lands, and a clause conferring upon Congress legisla- 
tive or political dominion. In the eighth section of the first article, among the powers delegated, 
we find : 

" To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (notexceedin:^ ■ 
ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress be- 
come the seat of the government of the United States." 

This power was limited, expressly, to a distnct7iot exceeding ten miles square — sojeak)u^ 
were our fathers of the authority of the federal government and of the exercise of a power 
thus arbitrary in character. Yet, after all, a power more despotic and irresponsible has been 
deduced — or, rather -its deduction has been attempted — from language entirely inappropriate, 
and over a region greater than the area of the original States. 

Whence, then, is derived the authority of Congress over the Territories? I answer, Mr. 
President, that it is a frwsi arising from, and expressed in, all the deeds of cession from the 
States, and the treaties Avith France, Spain, and Mexico, by which we have acquired new do- 
main — a trust for our ciiizens who may inhabit these Territories, and to be exercised solely 
with a view to their becoming one of tlie political communities known as States in our Union. 
And, therefore, whatever restriction or regulation of a legislative character would prevent tha 
State, when formed, from standing on terms of equality with the original thirteen States, is im- 
proper, unjust, and tyrannical, v/hilst the territorial condition centinues. It may be, sir, tha: 
no hand is powerful enough to stay the exercise of congressional legislation ; and in that sense, 
perhaps, the authority of Congress would seem to be unlimited. But even unlimited authority 
does not confer the sanction of right upon an arbitrary regulation. 1 agree with Edmun.I 
Burke, that " arbitrary power is a thing which no man can give." 

A regulation of the domestic and local affairs of a community — whether you call it a Stats, 
a Territory, or by what title soever — in opposition to, or disregard of, the wishes of the inhab- 
itaHts — restraining them from the advantages enjoyed by their fellow-citizens in other States gc 

* Jburnal of the Convention, page 260. 



Territories, for the developcment of their material resources, the forms of labor which arc 
best suited to their soil, climate, and circumstancee — such a regulation, in my judgment, ia a 
very gross abuse of the power, wherever power does exist, and a tyrannical assunnptiori 
wherever it does not. And when we consider that the whole scope of a territorial government 
i« to provide for the future admission of the community over which it exists into the Union as 
a State, the proposition becomes too clear for any dispute — except from those who love to cavil 
upon trifling distinctions, or rather upon distinctions without any difference — that whatever re- 
striction cannot be imposed on the ^tate after admission, cannot be imposed at that time; anJ 
whatever cannot be imposed as a requisite to admission, cannot, in good faith, be im.iosed du- 
ring the territorial form of government. It would be a distinct breach of the " trusts" upon 
which alone Congress exercises dominion over the Territories — the trusts, namely, of provi- 
ding for the erection of new States, and their admission into the Union. For, as was said by 
the ^Supreme Court in the case of Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, already cited — 

" Whenever the United States shall have fully executed those trusts, the municipal eover-* 
eignty of the new States will be complete throughout their respective bortiers, and they and the 
original States will be upon an equal footing in all respects whatever." 3 Howard, 224. 

To forestall the exercise of State sovereignty, upon a question which is domestic and local in 
its character, would be not only unjust and unfair, but fraudulent. 

In apology for such an abuse of power, nevertheless, the senator from New York dec'ired to 
us, in set phrase, that slavery was ai'd ever had bet n a mere "outlaw " in our politic il sy."?- 
tem. This proposition, Mr. President, is wholly untenable. So far from being an outlaw, as 
claimed, that is the only municipal institution of the States (as I have shown) over which the 
Constitution extends an express protection; and I may add, that it has existed at soifle period 
or other in every nation, and with every people, of whose history we have the least record. 
Nor can there be any doubt that slavery is recognised and protected to the present hour by the 
law of nations, upon the high seas, and in all places where it has not been excludeil under the 
operation of a local law. The senator irom Loui«irtna [Mr. Benjamin] cited the Insti'uties of 
Justinian, some weeks since, to the effect that slavery is a creature of the law of nations ;* and 
thereupon the senator from New York attempted to ridicule the citation, by informing us that 
Justinian was a Roman Emperor — and perhaps a tyr.mt — who lived many huidreds of yearfi 
ago. But, sir, the senator must know that Justinian did not invent (and probably never read) 
the Institutes which bear his name ; that they were composed by the most learned a>id emi- 
nent men of the empire, and that to-day, they furnish law to more than two-thirds of the 
civilized world. The very paragraph cited by the senator from Louisiana is reiterated by Do- 
mat, the great expounder of the civil code in modern times, as well as by numerous oth^r ac- 
knowledged authorities. Unquestionabl]', therefore, it is the law, as understood in continental 
Europe, in iVIexico, in Central and South America. The courts of England teach the same 
doctrine. In the case of a French vessel, Le Loid , engaged in the African slave-trade, whirh had 
been seized by an English cruiser and brought into port for condemnation, Sir Wnliam Scott, 
than whom there is no more solid authority on quesiions of international law, declared even 
the traffic in slaves upon the high seas to be oi:e which no nation could render illegitimate to 
the citizens or subjects of anoiiier. That was in the High Court of Admiralty*. December 15, 
1817. (2 Dodson's Adm. Report, 238 ) At Hilary term, 1820, the Court of'King's Be-ch-- 
Abbott, chief justice ; Bayley, Holroyd, and Be.'^t, justices — made a similar decision. (Ma- 
drazo v. Willes, 3 Barn and Alderson, 353 ) That was an action broogtit by the ov/ner of 
a Spanish vessel, engaged in the African slave-trade, against the commander of an English 
armed ship for a seizure upon the high sea.s, and the liberation of the negroc.i imprisoned. 

The senator from Louisiana cited, also, the decision of our Supreme Court in the case of a 
Spanish vessel, The ^3nlelo]ie, captured with almost three hundred negroes on board, brought 
from the coast of Africii, which vessel had been liDellcd in the admiralty of the United States 
■for condemnation. It was argued by some of the ablest lawyers thi6 cbuntry has ei-cr pro- 
duced — by William Wiit, Attorney General, and Francis Sct'tt Key. for the appellants ; and by 
John Macpherson Berrien and Charles J. Ingersoll, for theclaimants. The judges were unanimous 
in the opinion that slavery is recognised by the law <.f nations, and even the African slave-trade 
is not prohibited. In commenting on this decision., to be sure, the' senator from New York 
attempted a refinement by admiltiiig that a slave-trader could not he called a " piratual" out- 
law. Sir, the distinction amounts to naught. There is no outlaw, upon ^e seas, except a 
pirate. He, alone, of all sailors, is unprotected on the h'ghwny of natiotw. The pirate be- 
longs to no country, and his offences arc against the whole world. Any one ig authorized to 
arrest him, and the courts of any nation may convict and execute him. In October, 1834, 
twelve men of Spanish birth were tried for piracy at Boston, and seven of them were convicted 
and sentenced to death. They had been captured by a British officer, but, a? their last outrage 
was committed against an American vessel, were sent to the United States for trial. They 
could as well have been tiied and punished for ibis offence in England. f 



*Servitu3 antem est constitutio juris gentium, qua quia dominie alieno, contra naturam, »til>- 
jicitur. — Book I, title 3, sec. 2. 

t United States v. Gibert, 2 Suraner, 24. 



17 

These men were chari^ed as "pirates and felons," according to the 'aw of naiions, and o( 
i:u)urse were not sent to Spain for punishment or trial. Hut, although Great Britain and the 
Unit d Sates have both denounced the Afiican slave-trade — have declaif;d it lo be a capital of- 
fence — out government cannot puniah or otherwise molest an Englishman for engatiing in it. 
"The courts of no country," said Chief Justice Marshall, " execute the |/enal laws of another.' 
(10 Wheaton, I'iJ.) The African slave-trade is piratical, to be aure, for our citiecns, not by 
the 1.1 w of nations, but in vi-tueof our own statutes. If any one of our citizens should engage in 
it, thprefore, we can punish the offence ; hut no other nation can lay a hand upon him. 

The case of a French schoor.er. La Jeune Eugenie, in theciicuit court for the district ol 
Mass.ichiisetts, ha.^ been cited as an opposite deciision. Mr Justice Story held, to be furs, that 
inasmuch as the African slave-trade had been forbidden by the laws of FrcHice, no claim of own- 
ership could be preferred to slaves re.^cued from captivity on the high seas in behalf of a 
French suLject. But instead of pronouncing slavery an outlaw, the- court decided exactly 
otherwise. What the senator from New York read to us two wetiis ago was in reference 
to the African slave-trade — of which IVlr. Jusiice Story well said, that beside the question 
of enslavement, it involved necessarily a breach of all moral duties and humane precepts. Ah 
to the institution of slavery, however, the J udge declared that it had a " legitimate" existence. — 
(2 Mason, 445, 446.) 

But this is not all. I find that, even prior to the Constitution, our revolutionary fathers con- 
sidertid .-slaves aa legitimate property, and exiended to the master all the protection of ihe con- 
federateil government. In the provisional articles of peace with Great Britain, signed at Paris, 
November 30, HSS, by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, am! Henry Laurei.s, as 
American commissioners, it was siipulateu that the British forces should retire trom the limits 
of the United States without •' carrying away any negroes or other property" of the inhabi- 
tants. — (U. S. Statutes, vol. 8, p. 67.) The Bri i*h commaiiders did not observe this article j 
and General Washington, after having addressed them several remonstrances without efftct, hiid 
the matter before the Continental Congress. It was referred to a committee for consideration ; 
and finally, August 9, lTb6, a resolution was adopted that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs 
should lause the numbrrs, names, and ownirship of all negroes '* belonging to the citizens of 
each State, and carried away by the British in contravention of the late trfcty of peace," to be 
ascertained, and lists thereof made. — (Journals of Congress, vol. 4, p 6)30.1 

Between the 6th of April and the 25ih of rvovember, 1783, as Mr. Jeffereon tells us, three 
thousand nfgroes were thus taken away ; and our government required, and at length com- 
pelled, thegovi rnment of Great Britain to pay for them. What authority, then, has the senator 
from New York in asserting that African sl.uery ia an institution beyond the pale of the law? 
I leave him to the ant-wer which these facts aiTb;d. I do not state them, sir, because 1 admire 
the instil ulion, but because they are facts ; and it is our duty to decide all public tiuestions in 
the light of truth, upon established principles of law, without any perversion of historical 
recor s. 

Frequent reference has been made to the legislation of Congress in early times to show that 
the original purpose of the federal government was to exclude slavery from the Territories. I 
am willing to abide an impartial review of ai! those enactments. 

In the fifth resolution of the Ohio Le^isiaiure (you will reco"- ^ jur attention is specially 
invited to the scheme of governments adopted by theContinen... Congress on the vSd of April, 
1784. It may be foimd at length in the compilation of the public land laws, and contaiis no 
provision to exclude slavery from the States to be constituted and afterwards admitted into the 
Union. I begin with this scheme, Mr. President, because it was the first ever proposed — because 
Thomas Jefierson is .^aid to have been its author — because it embotiies all the essential features 
of the ordinance of July, 1787, except the anti-slavery clause. The deed of Virginia to Lb< 
United Slates for the Northwestern Territory was dated the 1st of March, 1784, so that this 
scheme followed closely upon the cession. I admit, sir, that a clause was propoi^ed for the 
restriction of slavery after the year 18(10, and Mr. Jefferson voted for it ; but his reasons and 
those of his assotiates (as I will soon demonstrate) were of a tempoiary and special character. 
The clause was rejected at that time, only seven States approving its principle ; and .he scheme 
went into effect without any provision upon that subject. To the General Assembly of Ohio, 
therefore, on the 9th of April, 1856, almost seventy-two years after the transaction, has been 
reserved the honor of discovering that " the original American policy" was embodied in a clause 
thus rejected on full consideration by a decisive vote. Sir, to my humble apprehension the 
" original" policy of our government, in this respect, the true " American " policy, should be 
gathered from the scheme as it was fimtlly adopted. 

Three years later i.n the Continental Congress, Nathan Dane, of Maseachueetts, proposed an 
ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory ; and on ihe 13ih of July, 1787, 
it received the votes of eight States for adoption. Mr. Jefferson was then in Europe. The 
ordinance contains many clauses not authorised by the articles of confederation ; and, of these, 
the most prominent is that for the admission of the new States to be formed under its provi • 
sions. Accordingly, in the Federalist, No. 36 arid No. 42, Mr. Madison declared that it was a 
clear case of usurpation by the continei.fal authorities. With a consciousnees of the defect of 
congressional power in this regard, Mr. Jefferson's scheme proceeded upon the idea of estab- 
lishing colonial States, and that no direct legislative control could be exercised over there- 
Provision was made, consequently, for a charter to be issued, under the seal of the confedfra- 



18 

tion, by which the form of a compact might be assumed aa between the Congress on the one 
side and the colonies on the other. Mr. Dane adopted the same idea for the legislation of 
July,' 1787, and his ordinance declares that six articles, therein enumerated, " shall be consid- 
ered as articles of compact between the original States and the people and States in the Terri- 
tory, and forever remain unalterable unless by common consent." The anti-slavery clause 
constituted the sixth and last of these articles; and I call the attention of the Senate to the fact, 
especially, because it explains the series of congressional acts relative to the States of Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, upon which the Senator from Iowa planted him- 
self 

We have thus seen that in July, 1787, the Continental Congress adopted a restriction of 
slavery which it had rejected three years before. Why this change? The scheme of 1784 
embraced all the Territories ceded and to he ceded by the States ; but the ordinance of 1767 
was limited to the territory northwest of the Ohio river, and was based entirely, upon the 
Virginia cession. Now, sir, it so happend that from the commencement of the revolutionary 
war, until the signature of the Federal Constitution, in September 1787, the State cf Virgina 
was employing all her influence and all her votes to suppress the African slave-trade. Re- 
.strained from the consummation of that project by the oft-repeated royal veto upon the 
colonial statutes, the people of Virginia, in convention of delegates, August, 1774, agreed 
neither to import nor purchase another slave from Africa, the West Indies, or any place 
abroad. Four years afterward — as soon almost as she had thrown oft" British allegiance — 
Virginia enacted a law to prohibit the foreign slave-trade. Jefferson was its author, but to 
Madison's perseverance and energy (as Jefferson himself said) is due a large share of the 
success. In the constitutional convention, We all know, Virginia proposed that the introduc- 
tion of slaves from abroad should be forbidden after the year eighteen hundred, or, if possib e, 
at once. She was supported in this by Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; but sYe 
was defeated by the votes of the two Carolinas, Georgia, and Maryland, with the votes of 
Nev,- Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. New York did not give her any assistance, 
and Rhode Island was not represented. The extreme South wanted more slaves ; the eastern 
.States were engaged in the African slave-trade, and objected to its suppression. I repeat, Mr. 
President, the three States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut — Maitvs was 
then a part of Massachusetts, and Vermont of New York — united with North and South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, and Maryland, on the 25th of August, 1787, in declaring that the African slave- 
trade should be tolerated until January 1808, a period of almost twenty-one years. It was in 
vain that George Mason pointed to the example of Virginia, and implored the convention not 
to perpetuate slavery upon the American continent. — (Madison Papers, Vol. 3, pp. 1398, 
1399'.) Newport, in the State of Rhode island, was the place from which vessels engaged in 
the slave-trade were fitted out ; but Massachusetts furnished a large portion of the capital, and 
realized a share of the profits. 

Let us pause here, Mr. President, for one moment. At this period (1787) the abolitioaof 
slavery was a possible, and even a probable, occurrence. The citizens of Vu'ginia, Delaware, 
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, were anxious to prevent the further influx of slaves, and thus 
prepare for the emancipation and colonization of those already introduc«d. Tiie slaves of 
the Carolinas and Georgia were few in number. There was not a cotton factory on this con- 
tinent. The cotton-gin had not been invented. Cartwright had just contrived the power- 
loom, but it was not in use. The first cotton sent from the United States to England was in 
1785; but it was not until the first year of Washington's administration (1789) that sea- 
island cotton was planted here, and upland cotton cultivated for exportation. Previous to that 
time, of course, slavery was not profitable, and might have been abolished. I v/ish to engage 
in no criminations ; but I must say that it does not become the New England States at all to 
quarrel with the South about slavery, or aflect any special degree of virtue upon the subject. 
Mo;'e slaves were brought into the Union from abroad, between 1787 and 1608, than were 
here at the time of the adoption of the federal constitution. Madison warned the convention, 
in express terms, of the consequences which have since ensued. "Twenty years," he said, 
" will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves."— 
(Madison Papers, vol. 3, pp. 1427, 1428, 1429.) 

In all Jefferson said or wrote respecting the institution of slavery,-he coupled it with the Af- 
rican slave-trade; and he looked upon the suppression of that as an indispensable prerequisite 
to emancipation. In one of his most remarkable papers — where he enumerates all those 
ichievements the memory of which consoled him in old age with the reflection that he had 
;iot lived in vain — we find his Virginia statute for the abolition of the slave-trade; but neither 
in that paper, nor in his elaborate autobiography, nor in any of his letters or documents, (so 
•far as I can remember) does he make the least reference to the proposition for excluding slavery 
from the Territories. How singular, Mr. President, if he deemed that so eminent and essen- 
tial a matter as is now claimed — if he supposed it to be (as the Ohio legislature declares) an 
exposition of " the original American policy" on the subject of our territorial governments — 
that he phould never have imagined it worthy of his own comment, notice, or even recollection I 

Jefferson was anxious to suppress the horrors of the African slave-trade ; and as the Congrefs 
of the confederation had no power to effectuate this great reform directly, he urged upon the 
Stale of Virginia to circumscribe the market for slaves, and thus, indirectly, abate the foreign 
traffic, by an exc'.usio.". of slavery from all her domain north and west of the Ohio river. But 



19 

Virginia had resolved to donate tliis empire to the confederation, and therefore referred hini to 
the continental authorities. He appeared in Congresa as a delegate in 1783, aided to complete 
the cession of the Northwestern Territory, and at once offered his territorial echemo, with an 
anti-slavery clause, in order to accomplish the design which he had so long cherished. He failed, 
however, as I have stated ; but upon James Madison and the other delegates from Virginia, 
in the next Congress was devolved the execution of his purposes. This, sir, will explain the 
sixth article of the ordinance adopted July 13, 1787, excluding the institution of slavery from 
the Northwestern Territory . But after the federal constitution had been signed at Philadelphia, 
on the 17[h of September, 1787, such an exclusion became entirely useless, inasr^ui^h as acom- 
promi.?e had been made in that instrument whereby Congress was empowered to suppress the 
African slave-trade in the year eighteen hundred and eight The anti-slavery article of the or- 
dinance was dictated, therefore, by reasons of a temporary character, and, as I will prove in a 
few moments, was purposely omitted in all new cases of territorial government after the adop- 
tion of the federal Constitution. 

Perhaps, Mr. President, some senator may suppose that I have dealt in mere conjecture, nnd 
ask me for the witness by whom I establish a fact of such pregnant and decisive consequences. 
Sir, ! call him not only from the grave, but from silence hitherto as impenetrable almost as the 
grave itself Among the manuscripts purchased by Congress from the executors of James 
Monroe, in the possession of our Committee on the Library, and as yet unpublished, is an ori- 
ginal letter from James Madison, dated Montpelier, February 10, 1820, of which I will read an 
extract : 

" I have observed as yet in none of the views taken of the ordinance of 1787 interdicting 
slavery northwest of the Ohio, an allusion to the circumstance that, when it passed, the Congress 
had no authority to prohibit the importation of slaves from abroad ; that all the States had,.'ind 
some were in the full exercise of the right to import them; and. consequently, that there was 
no mode in which Congress could check the evil but the indirect one of narrowing the space 
open for the reception of slaves.. . 

" Had a federal authority then existed to prohibit directly and totally the importation from 
abroad, can it be doubted that it would have been exerted, and that a regulation having merely 
the effect of preventing the interior disposition of slaves actually in the United States, and cre- 
ating a disiinction among the States in the degrees of their flove.-eignty, would not have been 
adopted, or perhaps thought of.'"' 

You will recollect, Mr. President, that Madison was a member of the Congress which enacted 
the ordinance He knew, therefore, all the circumstances attending its adoption;- and here, by 
his own hand, those circumstances are related. The ocrasion of the letter was itself solemn, 
and even momentous. InFebruary, 1S20, while the Missouri controversy engajjed universal 
atteniion — when the ordinance of 1787 was made the staple (as it has since been) of all the 
arguments for congressional intervention — we find that Monroe, then President of the United 
States, addressed Madison for advice; and Madison, from a retirement no longer dis'urbed by 
partisan suggestion?, informed him of the special, temporary, and exceptional reason upon which 
the anti-slavery clause was fiundeil. 

Why, sir, let us recall what happened at the second session of the first Congrrss. North 
Carolina did not come into the Union until after Washington's administration had commenced, 
and then at length surrendered her western domain — the present State of Tennessee. On the 
26th of May, 1790, an act was passed to establish a government for the region thus ceded (U. 
S. Statutes, vol. 1, p. 123.) It extended the provisions of the ordinance of July 13, 1787, ex- 
cept the anti-slavery clause, over the territory of the United States south of the Ohio river. "The 
senator from Iowa tmdertook to account for this by a"suggestion that North Carolina so stip- 
ulated in her deed of cession; to which I answer, that if it had been the established policy of 
the government (as now pretended) to exclude slavery from tlie Territories of the Union, Con- 
gress never would have accepted the grant upon such term.s. The cession of Virginia was 
rejected by the Continental Congress fiom January, 178], until March, 1784, beet use of certain 
conditions exacted by that State, and from which, in October, 1783, her legislature receded. 
So that, if the policy of Congress had been what the senator claims. North Carolina would 
have been forced to abandon the condition proposed. 

But the senator says, also, that Congress tolerated slavery in Tennessee, because it existed 
there at the time, and prohibited the same institution in the territory northwest of the Ohio 
river, because it did not exist there. The Senator is misinformed in this particular. There 
were slaves in the Northwestern Territory when the ordinance of 1787 was adopted ; in fact, 
sir, there were none but slaveholding settlements. These were at Detroit, now in the State of 
Michigan, where the Pawnee Indians were held as slaves, and at St. Vincennes, Indiana, and 
Kaskaskia, Illinois, where negro slavery existed. As late as February 12, 1793, slaves were 
held in the Territory by color of law; and the fugitive-slave act of that date, the first ever 
passed, expressly provided for their recaption. (U. S. Statutes, Vol. 1, p. 302.) Moreover, 
Mr. President, slavery existed in what now constitutes Indiana and Illinois, despite the ordi- 
nance of July 13, 1787, from the time of its first settlerr.ents until after both those States had 
been admitted into the Union. In certain resolutions unanimously adopted December, lfc06, 
by tha legislature of Indiana Territory, to which I shall have occasion to allude hereafter, this 
fact is related to Congress in the most positive terms. The first con-^^titution of Illinois, adopted 



20 

August 26, 1818, saiiciicned the title to all slaves then within the State ; aid Illirois excluded 
slavery, as a pennancnt insiilulion, by a small number of votes. 

In this connexion, Mr. President, I would ask why, if the anti-slavery clause of the ordi- 
nance of 1787 was intended to have so permanent ancl extensive a character as now claimed, 
did not the cnnstituiional convention, which was sitting at Philadelphia at the time of its enact- 
ment, embody that provision in the Constitutiot. of the United States? It could not have 
escaped the attention of the members — many of whom were likewise members of Congress — 
rind the (act js, as I have sliown, that their attention was directly called to the qneKiion of con- 
ferring on Congress a legislaiive power over tine territories. All this is inexplicable, sir, ex- 
cept in view. of the statement contained in Mr. IVladiso-n's letter. 

It is true that the same Congress which refused to exclude slavery from the region south of 
the Ohio river, had passed an act on the 7th of August, 17d9, whereby the ordinance of 1787 
was modified in two unimportant particulars, and that this was done, as tiie preamble states, to 
adapt the ordinance to the federal Constitution. But that affirmance rested, as did all the sub- 
sequent acts for the subdivision of the Northwestern Territory and the admission of the States 
formed out of it, upon an idea that the ordinance was (as its own terms declare) a " conipact" 
between the people of the Territory and the people of the thirteen original Statfs, and was 
" forever" unalterable. Even in the act of April 19, 1816, for the admission of Indiana as a 
yratp, it is recited that the six articles of the ordinance to which I have alluded, were "irre- 
vocable" articles. (United States Statutes, vol. 3, p. 289.) I do not ficknowledge ihat this 
was a correct exposition of the legal effect of the Constitution of the United States upon the 
ordinance; but 1 say that it was the opinion entertained by Congress and by all the courts of 
the northwestern States, until December, 1850, when the case of Strader v. Graham, 10 How- 
ard, 82, was decided by the Supreme Court here. It is merely idle, then, to cte either the 
ordinance or the act of August 7, 178!^, or any of the acts relating to the Northwesiern Territory 
or States, as an indication of the general policy of the Constitution or of Congress. 

A great deal* has been said in praise of the ordinance, herfe and elsewhere, as if it were the 
perfection of human achievement. How singular that, like the Missouri restriction of March 
f>, 1820, its virtues should not have been discovered until after it ceased to exist. During the 
whole period of its operation in the territory now constituting the States of uhio, Indiana, and 
lllinoi?, the ordinance was disliked and even detested by the people. Why should this have 
been othervi^ise.' Until the Territory contained five thousand free male inhabiipnts of full age, 
t!ie legislative authority was vested in a governor and three judges, appointed by the President, 
and not responsible, in any degree, to those over whom they exercisfd so great a dominion. 
That this authority was abused by the governor and judges, there are many records of Congress 
to demonstrate. 

The ordinance invested the governor v/ith an absolute veto, one that all the members of the 
Territorial legislature together cOuld not overrule. It was exercised by the first governor, 
Arthur St. Clair, so frequently, and in a manner so reckless and wanton, as to have left an 
impression to this hour upon the political character of Ohio. In May, !t5i, almost half a 
centurv after the ordinance had ceased to operate, a convention of delegates asseiubled to revise 
the State constitution ; and although experience had shown the wisdom of a qualified or lim- 
ited veto, such as the President exercises, the tradition of St. Clair's despotism was so vivid, 
and the seniiment of the [leopleso well understood, that all attempts to confer a like authority 
upon the governor^m.et with signal defeat. Never, since Ohio was a Slate, has the veto power 
been tolerated in any shape or form. 

The ordinance required a property qualification for all ofiicers and elector;!. A member of 
the Territorial leg'slature was required to have, in his own right, a fee-simple of two hundred 
acres, and an elector a like estate in fifty acres ; and this, sir, at a time w-hen the public lands 
were sold only in large tracts, end at enormous prices. Against such a restriction upon the 
right of suffrage, the inhabitants of the Territory protested from first to last. 

Ohio has been styled, of late years, the "first-born" of the ordinance. This title is one 
which, in early timts, she would have considered as no compliment. Certainly she was not a 
dutiful chi!d. Her State government was formed without the ,-anction, and against tl.e will of 
the Territorial legi.slature. It was upon an earnest appeal from ihe inhabitants — disqualified to 
vote, most of them, under the ordinance — that the act of April 30, 1602, to authorize the 
adoption of a State constitution w^as passed. Even the delegate in Congress, elected, of course, 
by the " qualified" vo:ers, opposed it. But Prfc.-ident Jefferson lent his ear and liis influence 
nobly to the complaints of an oppressed people. The act of Congress enlarced the right of 
suffrage at the election for members of the convention, far beyond the provisions of the ordi- 
nance. In tri.th, Mr. President, the ordinance was trodden under foot by the people, and all 
who then exercised arnhority viniJer it were treated with contempt and derision, While the 
'•onvention was in session at Chillicothe, Governor St. Clair demanded the right of addressing 
It in his official chararttr ; but the delegates refused to recognise him, refused to hear him at 
oil, until he ask>d ihe privilege merely as an individual. They requiicd him to oisband the 
Territorial legislaiur<- which had appointed a session at Cincinnati, about that time. Of this, 
• however, h- re w«r no need . the legislature had been driven from Chillicothe, by a popular 
tumult ill. nrfvious year, ai>d its members concluded not to provoke stall extremities again. 
•Thfre never was a comniutoiy so disgusted with its form of government. 

Strai ^^ 10 relate, Mr. President, one of the most obnoxious features in the ordinance at 



21 

Uial time, was the nnti-slaTcry clause. It waa evaded in Oliio bj^ a simple process. An in" 
denture was executed in Virginia by wliich a slave covenanted to serve iiis ma^■.lcr fr life ; 
and then thr slave was taken to the Nonhv/estern Territory aa an apprentice. To such an 
extent did this prevail under the ordinance, that when the first Constitution of Ohio was 
adopted, November 29, 1802, a provision was ni^serted to annul such indenttires thereafter. 

Jn the resid.ie of the Territory, Indiana and Illinriis, this question ssumed a more aerioua 
importance. In November, 1802, while ihe Ohio convention was in session, the inhabitants 
of the Indiana Territory (comprising; what is now Illinois as well .>s Indiana) elected flele^jatea 
to a TerritorinI convention by which their grievances might be considered and m:.de known to 
Congress. The convention assembled at Vincennes in December of that year, and General 
Hariison p'-esided over its deliberations. A memorial to Congres.s was prepared, signed, and 
sent to the Hmise of Representatives. The original document is now before me — authenticated 
by General Harrison's signature and by the Territorial seal — taken from the files of the House 
of Rppresenlaiives. As it has never been printed, to my knowledge, I will read those para- 
graphs which relate to the prohibition of slavery and to qualified suffrage : 

" To the Senate and House of Represenlatives of Ihe United States in Congress assembled : 

" The memorial and petition of the inhabitants of the IndianaTerritory respectfully showeth : 

"That nine-tenths of your memorialists bring of opinion that the sixth article of compact, 
contained in the ordinance for the government of the Territory, has been extremely prejudicial 
to their interest and welfare, requested the governor, by petitions from each ot the several 
counties, to call a general convention of the Te'ritory for the purpose of taking the sense of 
the whole people, by their representatives, on a subject to them so interesting, and of after- 
wards taking such measures as to them might seem meet, by petiiioo to your honorable bo- 
dies, not only for obtaining the repeal or suspension of the said aiticle of compact, but also for 
thai of reprpseniing and petiioning for the pas.iage of such other laws as would, in the opinion 
of li.e convention, be conducive to the genera welfare, population, and happiness of this dis- 
tant and unrepresented portion . f the United States. 

"This convention is now sitting at Vincennes, and have agreed to make the following rep- 
rtr.?entation to the Congress of the United States — not in the least doubting but that every thing 
they can desire (not prejudicial to the Constitiuion or to the interest of the general gover.iment) 
wil! rcadilv be granted to them. 

"The sixth article of compact between the United States and the people of the Territory, 
which declares there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in it, has prevented the 
country from populating, and been the reason of driving many valuable citizens possessing 
slaves, to the .Spanish side of the Mi.ssi.^sippi — most of whom, but for the prohibition contained 
in the ordinance, would have settled in this Territory — and the consequences of keeping that- 
prohibition in force will be that of obliging the numerous class of citizens disposed to emigrate 
to seek an asylum in that country whero they can be permitted to enjoy their propeity. 

"Your memorialists, however, and the people they represent, do not wish for a repeal of 
this article entirely, but that it may be sus-pended for the term often years, and thets to be again 
in force ; but that the slaves brought into the Territory during the continuance of this siispen- 
Mion.and their progeny, may be <;onsidered ai^d continued in the same state of servitude as if 
they had remametl in those pans of 'he United States where slavery is permitted, and from 

whence they may have been removtd. 

*«**#« ***** 

"Your memoriali.sts further show, that they view that part of the ordinance for tlic govern- 
rnert of the Territory v/hich requires a freehold qualification in fifty acres of land a.^ elector for 
members to the |;eneral assembly as subversive of the libe ties of the citizens, and tending 
to throw too great weight in the .scale of wealth. They tlierefore pray that the right o( suffrage, 
(in voting for representatives to the general assembly) may be extended to the free male in- 
habitants of the Territory, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, but under such reg- 
ulations and restrictions as to you in your wisdom may seem proper. 

«*»##« **«*■*■ 

"Your memorialists are well aware that the consideration of the numerous objects contem- 
plated by this m;morial will require more time than can well be spared from the important 
and general concerns of the Union; but when they reflect upon their neglected and trphan-like 
situation, they are emboldened to hope that their wants and wishes will meet with all the in- 
dulgence and attention necessary to secure to them the relief which is so essential to their wel- 
fare and happiness. 

" Done at Vincennes, in (he Indiana Territory, the twenty -eighth day of December, in the 
year of our Lord one thou.=;and eight hundrei and two, and of the independence of the United 
States the twenty-seventh. 

" By order of the convention. 

" WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, ^ 

" President, and delegate from the county of Knox, 
"Tote: 

'* John Rice Jones, Secretary." 
[Territorial seal.] 



22 

Thi» memorial was present?d to the House of Representatives on the 8th of February, 1803, 
and was referred to Messrs, Randolph, Grriswold, Robert Williams, Lewis R. Morris, and 
Hoge, as a select committee.' 

On the 2d of March, 1803, the committee made an adverse report on both the particulars 
which 1 have specified. (American State Paper?, " Public Lands," vol. 1, p. 160 ) This was 
referred, says the Clerk's endorsement, to "a Committee of the Whole House to-morrov/." 
The morrow, unfortunately, was the last day of the Congress, and the subject, of course, was 
not considered. Two facts are worthy of notice in this connexion : First. The African slave- 
trade had not been abolished; it was still entitled to a license of five years, almost, under tne 
Constitution. Second. A scheme for the concerted insurrection of slaves in Virginia had been 
discovered three years previously, and the public mind had not recovered from that alarm. 

On the 15th of December, 1803, the memorial was agnin considered, together with the report 
of the select committee, and thereupon Messrs. Rodney, Boyle, and Rhea, of Tennessee, were 
appointed a new committee to examine it. These gentlemen reported, February 17, 1804, in 
fuvor of the prayer of the petition, and especially that the sixth article of the ordinance should 
be pu-'ipended for ten years, " so as to permit the introduction of slaves born within the United 
States from any of the individual States." i Am. State Papers, " Miscellaneous," vol. 1, p. 
337.) In respect of limited suffrage in the Territories, the committee said: , 

" It must be the true policy of the United States, with the millions of acres of habitable 
counfry which she possesses, to cherish those principles which gave birth to her independence 
and created her a nation, by affording an asylum to the oppressed of all countries." 

A resolution was reported, therefore, contemplating what is now called " alien " suffrage. 

This lepirt, also, was committed to a Committee of the Whole House, but never was con- 
sidereJ, 1 suppose, as there is no trace of any vote or discussion. 

At the next Congre:'s, December 18, 1805, the subject was again brought before the House, 
and was referred to Messrs Garnett, Morrow of Ohio, Parke, Hamilton, Smith, of South 
Carolin.n, Walton, and Van Corilandt. This committee reported in favor of the petition, Feb- 
ruary 14, 1806. (Am. St^ue Papers, "Miscellaneous," vol. I, p. 450.) 

It will be noticed that Jeremiah Morrow, then the sole representative of the State of Ohio, 
was a member of the committee; and as the report was unanimously made, it might be well 
to ascertain what his opinions were. I will quote, therefore, from this document : 

" Having attentively considered the facts stated in the said petitions and memorials, they are 
of opinion that a qualified suspension, for a limited time, of the sixth article of the compact, 
between the original States and the people and States west of the river Ohio, would be beneficial 
to the reopleof the Indiana Territory. The suspension of thi.s article is an object almost univer- 
sally desired in that Territory. It appears to your committee to be a question entirely differ- 
ent from that between s'avery and freedom, inasmuch as it wouUl merely occasion the removal 
of persons, already slaves, from one part of the country to another. The good effects of this sus- 
pension, in the present instance, would be to accelerate the population of that Territory, hith- 
erto retarded by the operation of that article of compact, as slaveholders emigrating into the 
western country, might then indulge any preference which they might feel for a settlement in 
the Indiana Territory, instead of seeking, as they are now compelled to do, settlements in other 
States or coun'rics permitting the introJuction of slaves. The condition of the slaves them- 
selves would be much ameliorated by it, as it is evident from experience that the more they 
are separated and diffused, the more care and attention are bestowed on them by their masters — 
each proprietor having it in his power to increase their comforts and conveniences in proportion 
to the smallness of their numbers. The dangers, too, (if any are to be apprehended,) from too 
large a black population existing in any one section of country, would certainly be very much 
diminished, if not entirely removed. But whether dangers are to be feared from this source or 
not, it is certainly an obvious dictate of sound policy to guard against them as far as possible. 
If this danger does exist, or there is any cause to apprehend it, and our western brethren are 
not only -willing but desirous to aid us in taking precautions against it, would it not be wise to 
accept their assistance.' We should benefit ourselves without injuring them, as their population 
must always so far exceed any black population which can ever exist in that country as to 
render the idea of danger from that source chimerical. 

♦' Your committee consider the regulation contained in the ordinance for the g(5vernment 
of the territory of the United States, which requires a freehold of fifty acres of land as a 
qualification for an elector of the General Assembly, as limiting too much the elective fran- 
chise. Some restriction, however, being necessary, your committee conceive that a residence 
continued long enough to evince a determination, to become a permanent inhabitant, should 
entitle a person to the rights of suffrage. This probationary period need not extend beyond 
twelve months." 

The committee reported these resolutions, with others, for adoption : 

"That the sixth article of the ordinance of 1787, which prohibits slavery within the Indiana 
Territory, be suspended for ten years, so as to permit the introduction of slaves, born within 
the United States, from any of the individual States. 

"That every white freeman of the age of twenty-one years, who has resided within the 



23 

Territory twelve months, and within the county in which he claims a vote six months imme- 
diately preceding the election, shall enjoy the rights of an elector of the General Assemljly." 

It may be, Mr. President, that the citizens of Ohio will sanction the doctrines expressed in 
tat resolutions of the present log;is!ature ; but, if so, they will depart frorfi the landmarks 
eitiblished by that staunch old patriot and pioneer, Jeremiah Morrow, in the days when he, 
alone, spoke for Ohio in the other House of Congress — those ever-memorable days, too, when 
Thomas Jefferson stood at the helm of our federal government. 

But, sir, I have not finished the history of this matter. Tired of delays, at length the in- 
habitants of Indiana Territory took the law into their own hands ; and, by an act of their 
legislature, recognised slavery as a territorial institution. The fact is stated in two other doc- 
uments (never published) which 1 have before me— taken likewise from the files of the House 
of Representatives. They were presented, it seems, on the 17th of January, 1806, and re- 
ferred to the select committee previously appointed, of which Mr. Garnett was chairman. 
They will best explain themselves: 

" At a meeting of the citizens appointed to form a committee from the several townships 
in the counties of St. Clair and Randolph, to take into consideration and represent to the gen- 
eral jjovernment the grievances of these counties, the 25th day of November, 1805: 

" Present in committee: James Lemon, John Messenger, William Scott, John Whiteside, 
Moses Short, John Edgar, E. Backus, John Beaird, E. Bilderback, John Everts, William. 
Chatfin, Ralph Drary, Henry Levin, William Goings, Samuel Kenney, Robert Robinson, 
Jean F. Perry, N. Jarrott, Etienne Pansannce, and William Biggs. 

" On motion, unanimously resolved, That Colonel John EJgar be chairman, and Robert 
Robinson clerk of this committee. 

Resolved, That a memorial be prepared stating the grievances of these counties j that it be 
signed by the members of this cominittee, and transmitted to the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States in sessi)n. *■ * * * * * * * * 

" And whereas the ordinance of 1787 for the government of this Territory is respected by 
the people as the Constitution of their country, this committee entertain a hope that the gen- 
eral government, after guaranteeing to the people the privileges in that ordinance contained, 
will not pass unnoticed the violation thereof by the late act of the legislature of this Territory, 
authorizing the importation of slaves and involuntary servitude for a long term of years. 

'' And although this committee entertain uo doubt but that the act in question will .render 
service by adding a spring to the growth of this country, they express the disapprobation of 
a people who never will consent to a violation of that ordinance for this privilege of slavery. 
When Congress shall deem a change of the ordinance expedient, they will cheerfully agree 
to the measure." 

, Some senator may suppose, perhaps, that the committeemen or their constituents were 
opposed to slavery, and resented the idea of its introduction. Not at all, sir. They v.'islied a 
division of the Territory, and this complaint was inserted with others, in order to make out a 
case of usurpation against the Territorial legislature. The establishment of a court of chan- 
cery was another pretext for complaint. In their memorial (which I have here) they implore 
Congress to allow them the privilege of holding slaves. 

•'The memorial c f the undersigned persons, being a committee appointed by the inhabitants 
of the Illinois for the purpose of laying their grievances before the national legislature, re- 
spectfully sheweth : 

" That this country is composed of that part of the domain of the United States on the north- 
west of the river Ohio, which, by the ordinance or compact of 1787, has been designated to 
form the western State, bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Wabash, a north line drawn 
from Vincennes to the divisional line between the United States and Canada, and by this line to 
the Lake of the Woods and the Mississippi. 

" That for the purposes of a temporary government, it now forms a member of the Indiana 
Territory, and is divided into two counties, Randolph and St. Clair. 

'• That the form and extent of this government have, from certain circumstances, become not 
only undesirable, but productive of the most pernicious effects ; and your memorialists most 
humbly solicit your attention while they detail these circumstances, while they suggest the 
propriety of a division of this government and the erection of that part of it, above described, 
into a separate colony. 

•' Your ir.emorialis.ts approach your honorable body with the more confidence on this sub- 
ject, since they flatter themselves that the nation has become sensible of the situation in which 
they have been, their long struggles, their unprotected state, their patient submission to incon- 
veniences, and their claims to be now heard. 

" Your memorialists would further beg leave to solicit, as a thing which would be promotive 
of the prosperity cf this country, the permission to hold slaves in it. 

" The prir.cipleof domestic servitude we do not advo:ate ; yet domestic servitude has found 
its way into the United States — it is immovably established there. When an evil beaomea 
irremediablej is it not wisdom to convert it, if possible, to soriie use .' 



24 

" However unnecessary this state of servitude may be thought in the eastern part of this 
Territory, no man has doubted its importance here, where, amons wliites, healih and labor are 
alniopt i compatible ; here, too, a comiiry to which it would prol^ably brin^ back ihe pnnr.ipal 
seiners of Upper Louisiana, since they have been driven from home by the fear of ioting their 
aervanis " 

I huve r.-latpd the action of the third fueled committee upon the Indiana memorial, to which, 
as I liav sa d, these 1*0 documents w^re likewise referred. That report was conimitied to 
the Cornmitiee of the Whole House, but I cannot find that it ever came to a vote, or was even 
discusi^e'i. 

The litisjature of Indiana Territory persevered, however, in its application. In December, 
ISCr;, It ttdipifd, unanimously, a sirics of resolutions upon the subject, and a copy was pre- 
sented to tht Senate as well a^ lo the Houce. (Am. State Papers, " Miscellaneous," vol. 1, p. 
467.) I will rewd one of the resolution.^ : 

" Beifolved, unanimously, That the citizens of this part of the former Northwestern Territory_ 
consiiloi till mst Ives as having claims upon the indulgence of Congress, in reeard to a suspen- 
sion o/ ^"^ »ai I article, because, at ihe time of the adoption of the ordinance of 1787 f.lavery 
was tcler.iiel, and slaves general y | ossessed by the citizens then inhabiting the country, 
amouri!<nt: ti> at least one half the present popu'ation of Indiana and because the said ordi* 
nan'-e was pae.sed in Congress when the said citizens were not represented in that bod)-, with- 
out their benig consulted, and wi hout 'heir knowledge and approbation." 

Upon th<fe resolutions in the House a fourth committee was appointed, of which Mr. Parke 
was <lia r an. This comminee repoiterl on the 12ih of Febiuary, 1807, in favor of the righta 
cl^'imc'! I'y the Territorial Le^islaiurf. (Am State Papers, "Miscellaneous, " vol. 1, pp. 477, 
478.) I will not detain the Senate wi h reading from the report. 

By tills time, as we hsve seen, ih' question had become complicated with that of dividing 
the I eiriiiiry ; and at the nexi si ss oi , I 'ecember 3Ist, lh'08,a nport was made in favor of such 
divismn. (Am State Papers, " Misc lliineous, " vol. 1, pp. 945,946.) A slight concession had 
been nuu!*- by the act of February 26i.h, Ib08, in respect to the right of suffrage. (2 U. S. 
Sua. 469 ) 

On ti<8 .'■(d of February, 18(!9, the Territory v/as divided, and Illinois obtained a separate 
goven. merit. (2 U S. Stat. 3l4 ) This was followed by an act on the 2"th of the same 
month, providing that the mtmbna of the legislative council in lidiana, should be chosen 
by the people (S U. S. Stat. 52,^.) Byiheactsof March 3d, 1811, and May 'iOih, 181V, the 
right <if .suUVage in both Territories >- as extended to the full Imiit suggested m Mr Garnetfs 
res.luii. n. (2 U. S. Statutes, 669, 741 ) 

Her( endtd ihe interventi. n of C' ngns"?. But the legislature of Illinois Territory fallowed 
the cxtmple set by that of Indiana, ami African slavery. continued to exist there (as 1 have 
8ai>') uniii and after the adoption of a State government. • 

This rec tal demonstrates another fad. It is, that legislation can exercise no permanent 
influeni:e in deciding whether slavery shall or shall not be established, or even continued. 
Vai-i and futile to the last degree is any enactment on that sul ject. The condition of the 
c< uniry, its climate, soil, and staples of production, the supply of laborers — these are the deci- 
eive el rn«:iits, and these, in sptte of all ordinances or other statutes, will at length decide. It 
proves, also, that the inetituii tiS adopted under a territorial form of government by the people 
do not initicitte always the characfr of the State after i s admission into the Union. Indiana 
and illinoi.-i ere non-slaveho!(ling States — not because the ordinance of 1787 so provided, but 
because the labor of Africans was found to be unproductive, and the influx Of population from 
Europe (which began after Napoleon's downfall) supplied a host of laborers in the nor:ri- 
wesi, uir more (ffii-ient, intelligent, and useful, than slaves ever can become. 

Let us return, however, to the primitive legislAtion of Congress. Soon after John Adarns 
a.'^s 'Uied the presidential chair, it would seem, the discovery was made that a portion of ihe 
dom in which now constitutes the States of Alabama and Mississippi did not belong to 
Georgia — as theretofore supposed — but had been acquired from Great Britain by the limits 
pre.s(.ribed in the treaty of peace ; and, 'herefore, on the 7th of April, 1798, a Territorial gove'.i- 
nient was established over it Here, certainly, is an occasion for Congress — fettered by no 
terms of cession— to have realized that "American policy" which the Ohio legislature instructs 
me to pursue. The inhabitants were few in number, and the slaves less — not so many, at all 
eve.nts, as were then held in the Territory northwest of the Ohio river. But Congress on.'y 
exended the ordinance of July 13th, 1787, "excepting and excluding the last article," over 
that region — or, in other words, refused to prohibit slavery at all. (United States Statute?, 
vol. 1, pages 549. 550.) 

The next case in order is that of Louisiana. It was during Mr. Jefferson's administratioa, 
March v6, 1804. The tenth section alone is worthy of notice. That prohibits the importation 
of slaves from any port or place without the limits of the United States, or of slaves brought 
into t!ie United States after a certain period. It should be mentioned in this connexion, that 
on ac of Congress had been passed February 28, 1803, imposing severe p<!nalties on the mas- 
ter of a vessel which imported negroes, from abroad, into any State whc^e legislature had for- 
bidden the traffic. (3 U- S. Stat., 205.) The Louisiana act, however, did not prevent the in- 



^ 



troduction of slaves, except as before mcntionetl, from any part of the United States. (2 U. S ! 
Stat., 286.) 

The.-eareall the acts of Congress which preceded the Missouri question; and from the,?e, I 
submit, no argument can be drawn in favor of cnniressional intervention. M anwhiie, it 
should be recollected, five slavehulding States had been added to ihe Union — Kentucky and 
Tennessee while Washington was President; Louisiana during Madison's admit istration ; 
Mississippi and Alabama during that of Monroe. Where can we discover at all t!)" settled 
•' policy," of which we now hear so much — the deti rminafion that no slaveholdin^;; Stale be- 
j-ond the original thirteen should ever be permitted .' Sir, there was no. such policy or dtter- 
miration : it is a mere invention ; a false coinage of later and degenerate times. 

I have tried the patience of the St-naie too much alr^ ady to venture upon a discussion of the 
circuiitistances which attended the application, repeated rejections, and final admission of Mis- 
souri into the Union. Suffire it to say, sir, that the pretext employed against her — the fitct, 
ranv ly, that she was a slavehnjding State — is a pretext employed on that occasion for the first 
time. It was denounced l>y Jeffertion (v/ho wa^ then alive i in the most bitter language; it 
was denounced, also by Madison, by Jackson, and by Harrison. The letters of all these 
public men, addressed to Monroe, as President, may be found in the unpublished collection to 
which I have alluded. 

This memo-able controversy was the last struggle of the Federalists, as such, for political 
power. It originated with the Hartford coi vention ; anii then, as now, the proposition to ex- 
clude slavery from the new States and Territories went hand in hand with a proposinon to 
alter the naturalization law.-^. iVlr. Madi.son decliires, in the letter from which I have quotid, 
that It was a scheme of "coalesced leaders" to divide "the republicans of the North from 
thot.e of the South," and make "the former instrumental in giving the opponeuls of b"th an 
ascendency over the whole." The Kansas question of our day is but a repetition of that per- 
f'Srmance 

The concession made by the act of March G, 1820, was ur.wise, and, as it proved, eitirrly 
unavailable. I do not censure tho.<!e great and patriotic men who assented to it as an expedi- 
ent for terminating the dispute. They hoped it would prove a " compromise " in .'eed that 
it would settle the question (or ever — that thn Union would have security and the people an 
unbroken peace. In the same situation, assuredly, I should have done as they did. 

But, sir, alas! the mistake wns a fatal one. It brought no security eind no saiisfiction. Tt 
onsettled all that had been settled before. It only encouraged new a2;gressi'in ; and in the 
niid.sts of our war with Mexico, when the zeal of every patiiot should have been kindled ivith 
a new flame, the most hideous feature of ancient Federalism — clad only in another guise —once 
n:ore received the appro! ation of the Ilou.^e of Representatives. From the date of iht; Mig- 
•souii act, in March, 1820, a hollow truce liad prevailed ; and the evil day was post oued, 
thrice and again, by the coupling of new States together — a slaveholding State w'tii a r on- 
s'.aveholding Stote — Missouri with Maine, Arkansas with Michigan, Florida with Iowa, 
Texas with Wisconsin. This, sir, is the " peace " which the senator from Vermont a.cuses 
t;;e last Congiess of having broken ; and if this be peace, tell me, in God's name, what is 
di.scord ! 

From the day of its enactment, I repeat, until the day of its abrogation, with one exception,' 
nevt-r did the representatives of the North agree to the line of the Missouri compromise. Some 
resisted it in the case of Arkansas, and some in the case of Florida. In the case of Texas, to 
be sure, they v;.ted for its application — and because that would exclude slavery from a portion 
of the domain to be arc|uired. But in no other instance, sir, from first to last. I shall not 
relate the troublous controversy which grew out of our Mexican acquisitions ; but as the 
senator from Vermont wa.-? so earnest in h's charge that the southern senators and representa- 
tives had repudiated a solemn compact, had violated the pledge of their fathers, had broken the 
faith of the nation, I must r-fer to an occurrence with which he ought to be famrliar. No sen- 
ator dt:nies, I presume, that Oregon was a part of the original Louisiana Territory, and subject, 
therefore, to the terms of the (so cabled) Missouri compromise. On the 15th of January, 1817, 
whilst the Oregon Territorial bill was befoiv. the House of Representatives, Mr. Knrt, of South 
(llarolioa, moved to amend the clause in which slavery was prohibited by the addition of this 
preface : 

"Inasmuch as the whole of the said Territory lies north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes 
aorth latitude, known as the line of the Missouri compromise." 

This was not a proposition that slavery should be permiTted in Oregon, nor that the southern 
States, or ihoirpjop'e, shriuhl have any immediate or practical advantage. It was only to de- 
clare that the act of March G, 1820, was a compromi;=e iti good foith ; or, as the s nator from 
Vermont now cal's it, a solemn compact, and to. base a congressional prohibition of slavery 
upon the facr of it-^ existi'nce. The subject was debated, and came, at length, to a formal vote. 
Tho.re were, 82 membrs in the affirmative, and 1 13 in the negative — the former chiefly from the 
southern States, and the latter eoiirely from ihe northern States. The senator fr in IPinois 
[iVIr. Douglas] voted in the affirmative, and the senator from Vermont [Mr. Coli,.vi'.^r] voted 
in the iirgaiive. (Congressional Globe, vol. lo, p. 187.) Th?y were both insmbe s of the 
House atthat time. Upon whose skirts, then, is the blood of this precious compromise.' 
■ It was in the midst of a controversy whether the principle of the Missouri compromise should 



26 

or should not be maintained, that the inhabitants of California— abandoned by Congress to all 
the miseries of anarchy on the one hand, or military despotism on the other — exhibited the 
most sublime spectacle ever presented, in my judgment, by a community of American freemen. 
Without resorting to books or political philosophers for any advice, they proceeded to establish 
a government for themselves ; and before Congress had determined whether s'avery should or 
should not be allowed in that country, adopted their own State constitution and decided the 
question at once. That, sir, was a case where " popular sovereignty" came to the rescue, arwi 
a well-timed resue it was. And, thereupon, without prolonging the old quarrel, but dismissing 
forever the ghost of the murdered Missouri compromise, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster— with the 
venerable senator from Michigan, the distinguished senator from Illinois, and others— adopted 
the case of California as a precedent for all future cases, and inserted a provision to this effect, 
at once, in the Territorial bills for Utah and New Mexico. That compromise, too, we are ac- 
cused of having violated. Sir, is it not wonderful that all the survivors of that gallant band 
which supported, and finally carried in triumph, the Territorial acts of September, 1850, should 
now be charged with a misinterpretation of their own purposes and language — and this, too, 
upon the authority of a senator (from Vermont) whs never lifted his hand to assist in that 
achievement, or of the senators from New York and New Hampshire, [tMessrs. Seward and 
Hale,] who resisted to the very last.' I appeal to you, senators, who — either in this House 
or the other — gave your votes and influence to that great measure of peace and constitutional 
vindication, the compromise of 1850, did you not all, without a single exception, vote for the 
Nebraska bill > 

If the compromise of 1850 was intended merely as the settlement of a case then before Con- 
gress, It was not worth one half the trouble bestowed in securing its adoption ; and the conven- 
tions of the two great parties which assembled in Baltimore, in June, 1852, committed an 
egregious act of folly when they affirmed a case already decided, and beyond reconsideratior.. 
But if the compromise be, as I have always supposed, the establishment of a principle applica- 
ble in all cases, henceforth and forever, it was a splendid achievement, and as appropriate to 
crown the career of Henry Clay and of Daniel Webster, as to vindicate the patriotism and ma- 
ture wisdom* of the senator from Michigan, and inaugurate the brilliant manhood of the sena- 
tor from Illinois. It was wisely affirmed, in that view, by the two .conventions of which I 
have spoken ; and in that view, undoubtedly, it superseded the effect and principle of the 
Missouri compromise, and established, instead, the doctrine of congressional non-intervention. 

Much has been said, in late years, concerning the extension of slavery, and that has now 
become the Shibboleth of a political organization. If by this phrase, " extension of slavery," 
is meant an increase of the number of slaves — whether by the re-establishment of tlie African 
slave trade or in any other wise, I concur in all the objections urged ; but, if it has reference only 
to the removal from one place to another, within the United States, of those who are already in 
bondage, and especially the removal of a master with his slave from a State where the excess of 
population, the exhaustion of the soil, or any other cause, has rendered it impossible, or difH- 
cult, for him to provide the slave a due allowance of food and raiment, as the recompense for 
toil, to another State, or Territory, where the labor of the slave will be productive, and will im- 
prove the master's condition as well as his own, I am unable to perceive the philanthropy, or 
the political economy, which would warrant a tithe of the condemnations pronounced. A 
square mile, in South Carolina, can support only a certain number of human creatures — 
whether black or v/hite — as all must be aware. As population increases, therefore, some must 
emigrate to regions less densely settled ; or else, while the number of inhabitants increases, the 
means of subsistence remaining the same, want, mif^ery, and starvation must ensue. These will 
fall in the first instance upon the slave, inasmuch as he is the inferior, the dependant, the sub- 
ject. To him, thus restrained of the right of locomotion, it is an act of the highest beneficence 
that his master should be enabled to transport him to another rf gion, more favorably con- 
ditioned, where those staples to the production of which alone African labor is adapted, can be 
ultimately cultivated with advantage. 

What would be the condition of the southern Atlantic States, to-day, if Kentucky, Tennes- 
see, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas had not been opened to 
their colonization .' Sir, instead of prosperous communities of white men, they would now only 
be populated by the black race — would have degenerated to the forlorn and even deso'ale con- 
dition of Hay ti and Jamaica. The white man would have been driven forth. The ne^ro would 
remain. Instead of noble pillars, supporting the edifice of our Federal Union, they would be 
like those broken columns, diufiguted and useless, which signify to the lone traveller where 
Nineveh, and Babylon, and Fersefiolis once reared their massive towers. Instead of burning 
stars, in the galaxy of our Republic, they would have been quenched by the blackness of 
darkness forever. 

To the negro, therefore, as well as to the white man, to uy of the northern States, to the 
Union at large, to the great cause of civilization and human advancement — for our own sake, 
in the generation which now lives and the generation to come, it is an affair of vital moment — 
of the very uttermost concern — that we should not commit the capital mistake of driving the 
white man from our southern Sta'.es, and abandoning more than one third of this empire to the 
dominion of the negro. For, su(,h, sir, will be the end, or something worse. As population 
presses upon the means of subsistence, year after year, the white race also will begin to suffer 
— to become degraded, feeble, ar.d defenceless — until that dread calamity supervenes, a servile 



27 

« . 

insurrection, when our brethren of the South, with their wives and little ones, are overcome by 
the force of numbers, and either exterminated or driven from their ancient homes and fire-sides. 
Would you, then, recognise the negro as a fellow- citizen? Would you permit him to exercise 
the political power of the southern States? Would you suffer some brawny knave, half brute 
and half savage, t" sit in this hall as a senator? No, sir, you would not! Despi ethephysiologi'jal 
comparisons, to which we have listened, concerning; the two races, the Caucasian of the North 
would never associate on terms of such equality with tlie base and incapable negro. He would 
liasten to the rescue of his kinsman in the South ; ke would exterminate the negro utterly from 
tha face of the earth, or else reduce that miserable race everywhere to a servitude more cruel, 
tuore desperate, more relentless, than ever was depicted in novel or in rhyme. 

From this horrible issue, sir, an easy escape is at hand. Let the slave, as well as the master, 
liave rooni I Let the southern States, hke ihe northern States, send forth colonies, avoid the 
dangers of too great a population, and, while they secure thus their own peace, and the peace 
of the Union, the negro himself will receive a boon more desirable than present emancipation. 
Have we not room, in all our western domain, for the Soutii as well as for the North ? Are there 
not regions where cotton, sugar, and rice, can be cultivated? — staples for the production of 
whicii African labor is available, and even piofitable ; but to which the white laborer will not 
give his toil. The Caucasian cannot abide the heat of a southern summer ; while to the negro 
ihat is not objectionable, but grateful Have we not room, I demand, for all our colonies? 

Why, sir, in the State wliich I represent, in Indiana, Illinois, IMichig&n, Wisconsin, and Iowa, 
there are millions of acres of the virgin soil — acres that await only the care of the husbandman 
to quit iheir wild luxuriance and cover themselves with fields of abundant grain. In Arkansas, 
likewise, and the regions westward, as well as in Texas, there are lands which can produce rich 
and noble harvests ; but wliich the v.^hite man, for a hundred years to come, never will cultivate 
with his own hands. Senators! you do not increase slavery, nor the number of slaves, by sucli a 
diffusion. You do not give this institution new power, or additional stability, or further advant- 
age. You mitigate its evils ; you postpone — if not forever avoid — the conflict of two irreconcil- 
able races ; you improve the condition of both ; you point out the only chance of emancipation — 
except through bloodshed — which the negro can ever have — the only chance which the white man 
will ever give him, with bloodshed orw'ithout, to attain the least degree of comfort and happiness. 

These are not alone my suggestions. They are the suggestions of the fathers — of Thomas 
Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, whose names the senator from Massachusetts 
invoi'.ed so many times. In all Jeffer.^on's disquisitions upon slavery, the evils which attend it, 
and the remedies for those evils, he never failed to declare that either immediate emancipation, or 
emancipation without colonization, would prove a bitter curse alike to the negro and the white 
man. From 1774 to 1787, as I have sho ^n, he had great hopes, and an ardent desire, for the 
succe.~s of gradual emancipation, coupled with colonization. He wished, therefore, to stop the 
introduction of slaves. He bentall his energies — as did Madison — to the accomplishment of that 
enterprise. How he failed, and why he failed, the senator from Massachusetts has reluctantly 
testified. From tiat period, Jefferson abandoned the idea of emancipation in hisliffctirne,'orinany 
definite series of years, and devoted himself to the discovery of some method by which the evils 
of slavery could be mitigated, and the chances of its final eradication increased. What was the 
method which he devised ? You have it, Mr. President, in his Louisiana Territorial act. It was 
to allov,/- the oifzen:? of the Atlantic States a liberty of removal with their slaves to-the Territories 
and new States ; or, in his own phrase, to diffuse slavery over a large area, and thus avoid the ter- 
rors of insurrectio::, decrease the hardships of bondage, and render feasible, in some degree, a res- 
toration of the African to his fatherland. I do not speak without authority here; and I now ask 
the Senate to consider the evidence. In a letter to John Holmes, dated April 22, 18^0, Mr. Jef- 
ferson said : 

" Of one thing I am certain — that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would 
not mske a slave of a single hun'ian being who would not be so without it, so thf.ir diffusion over 
a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitata the accom- 
plishment of their emancipation, by dividing the buiden on a greater number of coadjutors." 

Such, also, were Madison's views. In a letter to President Monroe, dated February 23, 
1320, that eminent statesman said: 

" I have certainly felt all the influence that could justly flow from a conviction that an uncon- 
trolled dispersion of the slaves, now within the United States, was not only best for the nation, 
but mo«t favorable for the slaves also — both as to their prospects of emancipation, and as to 
their coi;dition in the mean time." 

But a complete exposition ha.s been written for us by the hand of James Monroe. That he 
was in constant and confidential correspondence with Jefferson and Madison during the v/hole 
Missouri contest, is now clearly established. Pie received advice ffom them, and coincided 
with their opinions, as well as sympathized entirely in their sentiments. That he yielded, with 
j^reat reluctance, to the prohibition of slavery in the national domain north of 36° 30', is too well 
ascertained, and solely upon the suggestion that no other compromise appeared to be practicable. 
At one period, it seems, he deterniined to interpose the veto power, and actually prepared a 
message, the draught of v/hich, in his own hand, is yet extant. It contains a full decision of every 



28 

point embraced in this debate ; but I will read, at present, only the last two or three para- 
graphs : 

"That should the slaves be confined to the States in which slavery exists, as the free popu- 
lation will continue to emigrate, the disproportion between them will, in a few years, be very 
great; and at no distant period the whole country will fall into the hands of the blacks As 
soon as this disproportion reachesa certain state, the white population would probably aban- 
don those States to avoid insurrection and massacre. What would become of the country in 
that state ? Would the general government support 'he owners of the slaves in thoir authority 
over than, afier the States, individually, had lost the ]iower? or the slaves being in possession 
of those Slates, and independent of their owners, would the Slates be rtcognised as belonging 
to them, and iheir Representatives be received in Congress ? 

" That i' would be belter to compel (he whites to remain, and the blacks to move," &c, 
"That s'avry is not the off>pring of the Revolution; that it took place in our colonial state; 
that all further importations hive been prohibited bince the Revolution, under laws which are 
rigorously enforced; ihat in our revolutionary struggle the States in which slavery existed sus- 
tained their sh >re in the common burdens, furnished their equal quotas of troops, and pai^I 
their f qual share of taxes; that slavery, though a national evil, is felt most seriously by the 
States ill which it exists; that it would be destructive to the whites lo confine it there, and to 
the blacks, as ihe distributioi^of them over an extensive territory, and among many owners, 
will securi, them a better treatment; that the extension of it to new States cannot possibly in- 
jure the old, as they will claim all their rights, since no attempt can ever be made, or idea enter- 
tained of requiring them lo admit slavery; that an attempt to fix on the States having slavery 
any odium is unmerited, and would be ungenerous." . 

Sir, I csL't add naught to this testimony or these arguments ; and if the Senator from Massa- 
chusetts wnuld follow the example of the sages and patriots of our Revolution — would hearken 
to their counsels, and walk in their paths — how much better for himself, and for us all! h is 
the way of the constitution — a rigorous maintenance of equality between the Sta'cs. 

1 have no fears of compeiition between the labor of while men and the labor of slaves in cur 
Territorifis, or, indeed, elsewhere. There is ample space, ample occasion for both. The labor 
of the one cannot be successfully bestowed, at present, upon thcfte pursuits which are adapted 
to the labor of the other. Let the citizens of each State, or Territory, decide for themselves, 
with a view to their own wants and condition, whether slaves shall or shall not be ndmitied. 
Let us have no prohibitions by act of Congress— no arbitrary lines. That was- a dangerous 
and almost fatal error. The wonderful prescience of Jefferson alone was not deceived by the 
Missouri compromise; and all his predictions have been fulfilled. 

Mr. Piesident, 1 am neither an enemy of the negro, nor a friend of the institution by which 
he is subjugoted. I wish the ntgro well. I wish him liberty and happiness— hut 1 wish him 
liberty at such time, in such circumstances, and by such means, as will not debase and ruin 
the white man, or overthrow the great safeguards of our own liberty, and the liberty of those in 
whom we'are most interested. Let the negro have, at pres-ent, as much coriifuri and happi- 
ness OS, in his conditition, can be attained. Let him not be restrained by limits within which 
he must either perish or subdue his master. He will not be made free by our intervention. 
Congress can do him no service. Congress can on))'-, whenever it interferes, add to the sor- 
rows of his condition. Whether the negro be capable of higher civilizationw. and, if so, when 
or how he wdl attain it— these are questions 1 am not able to decide. He is now, even as a 
slave, far advanced in the scale of progress beyond all his brethrtn in Africa. Freedom, thus 
far, has not advantaged him. The condition of free negroes in the non-slaveholding Stales is 
worse even, and more pitiable, than that of the slave. I do not speak of exceptional cases— of 
such as have risen, cccasioiif.lly, above the level of their I'ace — nor of negroes in the north- 
eastern Slates, or in the northern portion of my own Slate. There are not enough in thtee 
localities lo excite the prejudices of the white man. I speak of those thousands and tens of 
thousands soatt' red along the Ohio river. In Cincinnati alone, there are thousands of such 
who liave litoally no rights— menials in every sense — without protectors or proteciion — eking 
out a miserable existence, dependent on public and private charity, spending a large part of 
their lives in firison, exposed to abuse and outrage of every description. It is a hopeless c<>n- 
dilion, Mr. President, because the free negro hSs ne friends. He dots not enlist the sympathy 
of Abo'itinni.-<s — tor he cannot vote, and no assault can be made, throiudi him, upon the se- 
curity of the southern States. Indiana and Illinois drive him fro in their bordt- rs ; and if he 
sIk'u d turn even to the '* free State " men of Kansas — to the men who are " now battling." as 
the Senator from Massachusetts declares) " for the liberty of all," they, too, would exclude him 
by a f "undum'^fital act. 

At one p;iiod of our history, as I have said, the emancipation and colonization of tiie Afri- 
can was qi.ite practicable. Then did Massachusetts interpofie; and the foieign s^ave trade, 
uno'(;r her protpclion, w,rs too powerful, and, in the end, victorious. But now. sir, a Senator 
from Mass chusetts rises to deneunce the conduct of those who controlled the desiinies of his 
Sltite, 111 past time, as utterly infamous. " The acknowledged turpitude," he ca'led it, " of a 
depart (i ETPuerMtion." The Senator deals largely in the classics; and I conimeml him to the 
words of ih^pRomui poet who rejoiced that he had never defiled the ashes of bis fa'.hers. Sir, 
I do not owe Massachuseiis any allegiance; I have not a drop of her b.ood in my v- ins. But 



29 

I will defend the memory of those whom the Senator assailed. They were wise, and evet 
humane, according to the measure of their generation ; would that wc mijlit all be as worthy 
in our own ! These were the men who gave Massachusetts her gl-ny, her wealth, her free- 
dom. And wh-^n the Senator paraphrased that great adjuration of Demosthenes, he did not 
appeal to the spirits of modern times, of the men who imagine ihemse v^s ao much better and 
more philanthropic than all their ancestors — but to the spirits of the mighty, dead — of those 
who, ahhough they tore the African from his home and sold him into bondage, would not be 
slaves themselves — who trampled under toot the British stamp-act, and overthrew the British 
navigations laws — who first, at Lexington, find Concord, and BunKer Hill, resisted ar monarch 
ill arm.s, and poured out their blood to fertilize that soil whence grew the tree of American in- 
depend'nce. And, sir, if the Massachusetts of this day does condemn the Massachusetts of 
yesterday with such bitterness and mortification as the Senator pretends, let her now contnbute 
from the stores of that immense wealth which the Senator has boasted, to assist the southern 
States in restoring to Africa the descendaVits of the captive whom she brought hither. 

The new Shibboleth, of which I have spoken, is not uttered for the sake of the slave; it does 
not touch tl)e question of humanity at all. It is only the watchword of a political crusade, 
and empleyed to advance the project of humiliating and subjugating the southern States. To 
be sure, sir, we have heard of the three-fifths clause, so called, as one which should not be ex- 
tended, in its effect, by the admission of new slaveholding communities. But how can thi.s 
be material to the argument? Each slave will be counted in the apportionment of taxes and 
representation, whether he remains in Carolina or is taken to a new State. Opposition to the 
three-fifths clause in the constitution, is another point of doctrine taught by the Hartford 
convention. Why, sir, what is this clause' It is only that, in the apportionment of repre- 
sentatives, as well as direct taxes, five southern negroes shall be estimated as three white men. 
If the " Republican" orators, so called, would denounce this clause for a different reason — if 
they arraigned the constitution because it had stripped from the slave two-fifths of his human- 
ity, ar.d thus reduced him to a fraction of manhood— there would be some consistency, at 
least, in their behaviour. . 

Why should not the .southern flegroes be counted ? The northern negroes are counted— not 
as five to hree, but as five to five. So are wonien, children, persons not naturalized, lunatics, 
idiots, and criminals. If the sruthern negro be a human creature, although a slave, why should 
he not he.cotmted as such.' Sir, ! will tell you. This was a compromise; not one which the 
South desired, but one which was forced upon her by the northern delegates. They admitted 
that the ^lave was a man; but, said they, he is also the subject of ownership, and of taxation ! 
And so they proposed, and the South agreed, that only three-fifihs of a slave should be esti- 
mated for representative purposes; and, as a recompense for the disadvontaire, that direct taxes 
should be levitd in the same ratio. Thus the compact was made, and thus it should be main- 
tained. S . . 
But, sir, the struggle is not for the other House of Congress: it is for this House, and for 
the picsidential chair. The northern States are exhorted to unite again.st the southern States. 
Wherefore.' To prevent the admission of a new slaveholding State.' [low does that ii^jure 
us.' Beyond the liM\its of delegated power in the constitution, Ohio cannot be affected by the 
action of the federal government. She is sovereign She is, in all other respects, independent. 
If the constitution were faithfully executed in spirit and in letter, it could make no difference^ 
tousinOliio as regards our prosperity, our rights, our domestic affairs, if all other States of 
the Union t'.^lerated, and even cherished slavery as an institution. And so, if the constitution 
be faithfully observed henceforth, it is of no consequence— not the least—whether the slave- 
holding or the non-slaveholdirg Slates be the more numerous. . 

The Senators from Massachusetts and New York have marshaled their cohorts to " dis- 
lodge" the South from " high places." This, sir, is but the prelude lo something else. The 
control of our federal trovernment, when obtained, will enable their par'isans to chastise, afflict, 
and lay wa?te one-half the Union. It cannot be done, of course, as long as the constitution is 
observed; and, therefore, the design may be expressed more ilislinctly, as a design to usurp 
the federal government, in order, by the force of mere numbers, lo disregard and destroy the 
constitution of the United States. Sir, it can terminate in nothing else. Even if senators on 
the other side v/ere ever so sincere in the dech.ration that they will not concern with slavery as 
it noA' exists in the States, they ccu'd not keep such an assurance; they would be over- 
borne by their ov.'n followers, and either compelled to violate their word, or give place to 
others less scrupulous. For whenever this triumph of sectionalism shall be complete— if so 
terrible a calamity cm occur—the men whom you have taught to believe that sLavcry is wicked 
above' comparison, and therefore must be prohibited in the Territories, and abolished in'i^the 
District afCo'umbia— the men who have learned from you to interpret the constitution as they 
please— will insi.-it that p'lblic diity, the voice of conscience, the hight!r law, all impel them lo 
liberate the African at once. And you must yield to the demand— or else, like the Girondins, 
be hur'cd from your places and sacrificed to the wrath of the demons you will have raised and 
inspired. Then would the saturnalia be celebrated — as when the negroes of Hayti were 
• emancipated, suddenly to turn upon and exterminate their masters ; when the guillotine would 
be r.'istored, perhaps for the punishment of those southern " aristocrats" against whom the 
Senator, from Now York inveighed with so much bitterness; when some new M embassy of 
the human'race" would wait upon the Senate with another Anacharsis Clootz at its head 



30 

and behind him the froward women and imbecile men, white and Ijlack, native and foreign, 
whose congenial occupation i3 only to outdo each other in profane and foolish tirades — when 
t!ie Deity would be dethroned by formal resolution, the places of His worship converted into 
recruiting stations, and the ministers of Hia gospel habitually indulge the arts of an auc- 
tioneer. 

I implore you. Senators, to pause, to survey the narrow isthmus on which we stand. This 
combination of the northern States against the southern States, where will it terminate? Al- 
ready from this chamber the dread appeal has gone forth. It will either remain unanswered — 
thar^ks to the wisdom of the people — or it will come back, in another session, with millions of 
fearful echoes; and each echo the knell of ruin. 

Not such, Mr. President, were the appeals of Washington, or Jefferson, or Jackson. The 
slightest discord between the North and the South grated harshly on their ears, and filled their 
hearts with pain Jefferson turned from the very verge of his grave to declare : 

"The Missouri question, by a geographical line of division, is the most portentous one I 
have ever contemplated." (Letter to Monroe, March 3d, 1820.) 

Jackson has warned us, in immortal accents, to beware of abolitionism in all its Protean shapes. 
And where, sir, could we find a more appropriate commentary on the speeches of the senators 
from New York and Massachusetts than is contained in the farewell address of George Wash- 
ington ? The reference is familiar, and, it may be, hackneyed ; but when the citizens of fifteen 
States are personified by an offensive title — ^^ The Slave Power'''' — and thus exposed to the 
hatred of their fellow-citizens — when to the most flagrant misrepresentations of their opinions 
and aims is added the assault of new parties, public and secret, political and religious, based 
solely on geographical discrimination ; when 1 see all these sis;ns, Mr. President, 1 know that 
the awful crisis has come at last — the crisis irl which the people of the United States must either 
turn with affection, with gratitude, with confidence, to the admonitions of Washington, or turn 
away to destruction forever! If the millions of simple-heartgd agriculturists, mechanics, and 
laborers— men too honest themselves to suspect others of deceit and falsehood— do not ai-ous>, 
and that speedily, vain are all theories of popular government — vain the wisdom of sages-- 
vain the faith of patriots — vain the ^!ood with which " the noble army of martyrs " ha i 
testified in past time. 

Mr. President, awful as may be this crisis — impending the issues of life and death to us,to 
our beloved country, to freedom, to civilization,'nay, sir, even to the African himself — ray hope 
does not fail. The senator from Massachusetts took occasion to inform us, to be sure, that he 
and those who are associated with him in political action will achieve a complete victory in the 
course of the present year. I am not a prophet, sir, as that senator assumes to be ; I am only 
■an humble, devout, and trustful believer in the ways of Divine Providence. But I find in the 
Holy Book which has been written for our guidance in botj^ temporal and spiritual affairs, a 
text worthy of the senator's consideration : " Let net him that girdeth on his harness boast him- 
self as he thatputtelh it off! " The senator has a desperate conflict' before him — one where he 
will be resisted with a courage so brilliant, a zeal so virtuous, a perseverance so stubborn, that 
the very stars, in their courses, will seem to fight against him as they fought against Sisera of 
jld. I'he senator need not flatter^ himself by arguments drawn from the year 1854. That 
tempest of delusion has nearly spent its strength ; it was pudden, but short-lived — desolating in 
the assault, but soon to be followed by grateful rains which will reinvigorate the seeds of pa- 
triotism once sown in the hearts of the American people, and since parched and withered, 
alas! by the great raaterial prosperity we have so iong enjoyed and abused. 

The future, Mr. President — the future! Let the senator from Massachusetts look forward, 
•ind tell me whereabout, in the whole horizon, north or south, east or west, he can descry a 
.smgle omen of that stupendous misfortune v/ith which he proudly threatens us. Sir, it must 
!)e otherwise. God is merciful, and in His mercy will I trust. From the trials of the last two 
years — from all the gloom of bigotry, fanaticism, and public demoralization, so predominant, a 
new and more splendid procession of events in our history must begin— the age of principles, 
more comprehensive, more equitable, more salutary than have been taught since that fearful i 
Missouri question first shook the Republic from its centre to its extremities : 

Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo : 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna ! 

The clouds of sorrow break away from our enraptui'ed vision ; and already, upon the firma- 
ment above, behold emblazoned in eternal characters the triumphant signal of the Union of 
jur fathers— the Constitution by which that Union was, established — the civil and religious 
LIBERTY of which thc Union and tiie Constitution are such magnificent and perpetual gurantees. 
Senators ! Let us all rejoice in this mighty deliverance. Let us not only take a better resolu- 
tion for the controversies which environ and waste our lives, but gather fresh and pure hopes 
for the untold millions who will lift their eyes to these heavens after we shall have finished our 
days on earth, and gone to sleep as all our fathers have gone. 



LIBRARY OF UUNijKt.;>;> 



016 089 352 7 




